Hindu festival and Buddhas in Lumbini

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We left Tansen by hire taxi for the three hour trip to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, and a tiny town close to the Indian Nepal border. The trip was stunning - traveling along the edge of some very deep gorges lined with rice terraces and jungle. The road was pretty bad in places - there were a lot of washouts and areas of landslide. We passed hundreds of buses - one after the other - and I've never seen buses as crowded before. Everybody was heading home for the Dasian celebrations and all the buses had at least a dozen or more young men perched on top of the luggage on the roofs. They all waved frantically when they spotted us - I was waiting for somebody to topple off! Lumbini was very tiny and the half hour trip from the border crossing town of Sunauli passed through very traditional farming area. We were back in India despite the fact that we hadn't crossed the border - everything looked Indian - the people, houses and farms! And it was busy again - you could feel the sense of craziness and rush in the air.
Lumbini was really only a strip of tiny shops and small guest houses which was near the main entrance gate to the park. Lumbini is considered one of the most important religious sites in the world and a constant stream of pilgrims come to visit the stone which marks the site where Buddha was born in 563BC. We found a room overlooking the rice paddies and went out exploring. We headed through the strip of shops and out into the farming areas. This area has a 15 klm network of footpaths running through the many tiny villages which surround the Lumbini park. It was a fascinating walk which gave us an amazing insight into very traditional village life. It had rained the day before though and was very muddy!. All the locals were out harvesting the rice crop, cutting by hand and loading it onto bullock drays. Many of the women were threshing the rice by placing it on the woven beds they sleep on and then stamping on it. Everybody was really friendly as the villages are trying to encourage more tourists to visit. There were cows and goats everywhere, lots of little kids wanting to see their faces on the digital camera screen and mud!!!
The whole time we were in Lumbini we were serenaded by loud temple music - it was blasted over the town via loudspeaker (and it was very distorted) from the Hindu temple. A temporary one had been set up in a tent opposite our guest house and it competed with the cement one further down the road. Dasian celebrations had begun and temple prayers at full volume were obviously part of it. The Buddhist owner of the guest house wasn't happy about it! Each temple had three gaily coloured icons in it - one in the shape of an elephant and two with human shapes - all had a lot of arms each and rather obvious breasts. It wasn't until we got to Varanasi that we found out what happened to them at the end of the celebrations.
Archaeologists have proven that Buddha was born in Lumbini. After his birth a massive complex of monasteries and stupas were built - all of which were destroyed by some unknown catastrophe shortly afterwards. Today you can only see the ruins of these. The birthplace of Buddha is covered in a large building and there was a constant stream of people visiting from all over the world when we were there. These pilgrims have been visiting here for years but it is only recently that Buddhist communities from all around the world have started to build 21st century monasteries reflecting all the different Buddhist cultures world wide. It's a massive area (8 square klms) so we hired bicycles to pedal around it - they were pretty crappy and I ended up on the ground when the seat slid off! We thoroughly enjoyed the ride otherwise as it was through wetlands. The roads were very muddy but we did manage to see most of the finished monasteries. I loved the Thai one - it had a lovely jade and jewelled Buddha as it's centerpiece. The peace pagoda was also beautiful - it is one of many that the Japanese Buddhist community have built around the world. The pagoda in Kathmandu that we didn't visit was built by them as well.
We ended our time in Nepal with an sunset and sunrise village walk again. All the locals were busy painting their houses which is part of Dasian and the goats were wearing temple cords around their necks in preparation for their slaughter which was to happen the day we left Nepal. We hired a taxi - with difficulty - to leave Nepal and take us to Varanasi on the River Ganges in India. Nobody wanted to work the day we left as it wa the main day of their festival - our visa was expiring that day so we couldn't stay any longer. It was the 10th day of the Dasian festival that we left Nepal - ten days earlier barley seeds had been planted in tiny pots and on the 10th day they are used in celebration. They are plucked and worn behind the ears, our car was blessed with them (they were placed on the dashboard of the car after tika powder was splashed all over the windscreen) and all the temples were full of them. Our driver only took us to the border where he arranged for another driver to take us the rest of the way. As we drove to the border we passed lines of goats waiting to be slaughtered - they were all crying pitifully! We had really enjoyed our month in Nepal - the people were very friendly, the temples unusual and the scenery spectacular. We didn't do any extended hikes - my foot problem simply wouldn't allow me to - but it would be an incredible place to hike in. We were really pleased that we did see regular glimpses of the Himalayan mountains and knew that we still had mountain views in Darjeeling and Sikkim to look forward to.

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Photos

Village house
Note the manure drying on the walls