Sravasti to Lumbini, Nepal……3 hours on a long bumpy road
Slowly, I am learning that a projected three hour ride is usually going to be double that. We cross the Nepal border to visit Lumbini where the Buddha was born. It’s a long way down a bumpy dirt road.
Everything is.
By the time we get to the birthplace, it’s starting to look like sunset. This was another day of hard travel. Don says that the British used to sentence chronic offenders to “transportation for life”. As my neck is snapped forward one more time, I say a little prayer for anyone who had to do this for a lifetime.
Lumbini is a park full of monasteries. Buddhist organizations around the world (except the US and Canada) build temples at sites like this and keep a small contingent of monks on hand. We’re too late to see the various houses but do get to wander through the site itself.
The place is a sea of prayer flags hanging from a small knoll of trees. Tens of thousands of flags. Wehen they are old and tattered, they break and hang in clumps from the trees at the center. Bright colors with an Indian feel.
Archaeology takes on a different meaning in this context. Along the roads, between the shops, hanging from the trees like these spent prayer flags, waste, trash and decay stand in piles. You can see the detrius that becomes the food of the ruins diggers.
As it is in each shrine, Buddha’s birthplace is an emotional experience. Pilgrims from all over the world come to pay their respects and collect some good Karma. There is a place where people who renounce their wordly life leave the hair they’ve shorn from their heads.
And then, we crawl back into the bus for a night in the infamous Hotel India. Bugs, lizards, small beds, Asian squat potties, the same old typical hard bed.
After two days of bouncy bus rides following an uncomfortable overnight plane which was preceded by a 22 hour expedition by air, we’re all spent. We face what seems to be our common fate…. A row of caserole dishes with six or seven unnamed curries, stews, breads and such.
In India, the Indian food is pretty good.
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