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Published: April 8th 2008
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Lumbini gardens
Birth place of Lord Buddha Manu had decided it was to be an early start - supposedly to avoid the early morning traffic getting out of Kathmandu. Obviously it wasn't early enough as we spent the next TWO hours sat in a traffic jam!! We would cheer as the coach inched forward a metre and propose visits to yoga classes, hair salons etc to relieve the tedium!
But eventually we painfully made our way to the cross roads - the cause of all the problems - and left Kathmandu behind. We were following the same road I'd taken on the trip to Chitwan National Park so as I'd seen it all before I plugged myself into my MP3 player and settled down for the long journey. After a very bumpy, dusty ride we finally ended up in Lumbini at the Hotel Glasgow and yes it was as rough as it sounds but at least the showers worked which is the most important consideration when you arrive hot and sweaty and irritable after a 9 hour drive on bad roads.
We decided that we wanted to at least DO something today apart from driving so headed off to the birth place of Buddha half an
hours drive away. We had to get into two little jeeps and I found myself at the front with the driver so had the full effect of our guy's thumb on the hooter - constantly!!
We were dropped off at the entrance and started to walk up the driveway to the sacred garden where Siddhartha Gautama - better known as the Buddha - was born. All along the way we were pestered by both adults and children wanting to sell us things. They don't take no for an answer. It does get really annoying and intrudes on your time at the place you're visiting, unfortunately counter productive with most of us as hassling makes us keep our purses firmly in our pockets. Left to browse I'd probably buy loads and the whole thing would be more pleasant for everyone. But of course that is my western view on the world where I want for nothing, the state looks after me when I can't look after myself and it's an atitude hard to shake off. Here of course life isn't that easy and everyone is competing to get the rich tourist's money. I should be more understanding, but it's hard
when you're getting hassled constantly.
Anyway we were in the middle of being pestered by these two little girls wanting to sell us postcards when all of a sudden there was a huge BANG behind us. Two motorcyclists had crashed into each other, the riders lying unconscious on the ground. By the time we got there bystanders were ensuring that possible broken necks were paralising the poor guys and broken bones were causing permanent, possibly life threatening injuries by making them sit up and shaking their heads about!!! First aid obviously isn't a strong point here. Fortunately they were ok, just very dazed. We all made an instant pact as a group to protect each other from similar 'first aid' nightmares if any of us was unfortunate enough to be involved in an accident while on our trip!
The incident had at least taken the attention away from us and we enjoyed looking around the birth place of Buddha in relative peace. We saw the pool where Buddha's mother Maya Devi was supposed so have bathed before giving birth and inside a building was an excavations and a stone that is supposed to be the exact spot where
he was born. There were some lovely grounds and it was nice to just sit quietly under a huge scented tree watching pilgrims and visitors looking around the site. We saw some buddhist monks with shaven heads and long red robes (none on mobile phones - my photo mission of the trip!).
Then it was back to our hotel for our last Nepalses meal of the trip - so momos and dal baht all round.
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