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A knock on the door awoke us around midnight. Myself and my roommate both being slightly anxious about opening a door to some random knocker in the middle of the night, hid behind the toilet door for protection (it seemed a good idea at the time) as we called out asking who it was. It was Javed our tour leader, calling an emergency meeting. We instinctively thought we were in trouble, and were about to be told off and kicked off the tour in front of the whole group - how humiliating! Lucky for us we weren't busted for some unfortunate travel crime, instead we were told Maoist rebels had called a strike in our area and we had to get out straight away. We packed in record time and within 15 minutes we were in a minivan on the way to the Royal Chitwan National Park. Javed warned us that if we were stopped for any reason, heard shouting or screaming, we were not to get off the bus under any circumstances. Now that is a way to make us feel confident about our safety right?
The Maoists are the Communist Party of Nepal, and have been fighting a People’s
Maya Devi Temple
The spot where Buddha was born War for over 10 years. They’ve really hurt the tourism industry in Nepal, the Royal Chitwan National Park used to see 92% of all visitors to Nepal before the Maoist insurgency, now it sees less than 40%. A few days later we heard that they did strike in Lumbini, a few people were injured, and we were glad we left when we did!
Lumbini itself is one of the most important religious sites in the world, being the birthplace of Buddha. It’s a very peaceful small town, almost a village, surrounded by Buddhist temples. The temple that is at the heart of Lumbini and the first place we visited was the Maya Devi Temple, the exact spot where Buddha was born. Buddha was born there in 563 BC, when his mother Maya Devi was travelling between two states when she came across a pond surrounded by flowering sal trees. She bathed in the cool waters, and shortly after she went into labour, had enough time to walk 25 steps to grab a branch of a tree for support before the baby was born (thank you Lonely Planet history pages!) The pond is still there, and the huge sal tree that
Sal Meditating
Under the sal tree in Lumbini has grown beside it is still used today by monks to meditate as they search for enlightenment. We spent maybe 8 hours in Lumbini, before being evacuated. The 5 hour trip to the Royal Chitwan National Park was thankfully uneventful, and even more amazing was that we were the first trip in 2 months that made it into Lumbini in the first place! We spent 3 days at Chitwan, and during that 3 days, I did absolutely nothing, and it was fantastic! Chitwan is home to Indian Elephants that wander through the streets of the village with their trainer sitting on top of them, which mortified me to the max. Nothing is more terrifying than enjoying a gentle stroll down the street when an elephant passes you by. Ergh. Everyone in the group apart from myself did a wildlife tour sitting on an elephant, which brings you closer to the rhinos, monkeys and on the rare occasions tigers. If I wanted to see animals, I would go to a zoo. So rather than join my travel companions on jungle treks and elephant safaris, I hung out at the hotel, read, slept, hit the bar, and slept some more. I played
board games with the locals, the Tiger Moving Game is a huge hit in Southern Nepal, and I kicked butt because I’m amazing, not because I was ‘allowed to win’ the game so I would buy it like other tourists believed. As if.
Electricity (or the more common local pronunciation Electric City) came and went randomly, sometimes it would only last a few hours each day, providing no relief from the crazy heat. Nepal gets it’s Electric City from India, and they randomly pull the plug either accidently or if you believe the Nepalese, completely on purpose just to piss them off. No power at night did keep away the mosquitos (which were probably malaria infested) and the humongous cicadas that were roughly the size of a fist. I was happy to escape the bugs and heat of Southern Nepal as we slowly made our way to Kathmandu.
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