yours intrepidly - from the nepal side of the border
at the border at dawn: start from kanpur on tue 13 sep at 20:40, our
bicycles at the back of a tavera.
faizabad by 1AM, gorakhpur 4AM, Sunauli (border) by 6AM
paperwork for car - bhansAr - charges are NR 400 per day plus 13% tax -
documents get done smoothly, no golmAl, all payments as per receipt...
in fact it is the indian police who ask for rs 200 "fee", but our driver
Anand says we can pay it only against receipt. it is then waived...
formalities over by 7:30. we then find a hotel to freshen up in - hotel
sangam near the turn to lumbini.
amit and binoy: in bhairahawa hotel; starting off for lumbini.
exploring lumbini gardens
aluparatha breakfst and set off for lumbini around 10. it is
21km, but we get lost and overshoot (i am looking for a canal shown in the
map). eventually, we find our way and spend some time
at the chinese temple with the fat smiling buddha and the guards
and the joss sticks...
open air school en route to lumbini. binoy at a stream approaching lumbini gardens.
at the chinese temple. decorated roof ornaments. ornately cast
bell.
then we go down to the mayadevi temple which is the main site where buddha is
supposed to have been born in the sAl vihAra, woods of pine. at the
heart of this temple is the ashok pillar - but it's a short squat smooth
cement-like pillar - not at all like a 3d c. BCE stambha.
the main building covers the archaeological finds of the area - this includes
a marker set up by ashoka during his visit, at the likely spot in the lumbini
garden where queen mayadevi drank the water of a pond and then held the
branch of a tree and gave birth to siddhartha. the site includes a marker
stone presumably from the period of ashoka's visit.
we observe it through a lattice of
iron rods where a proposed floor and glass enclosure may be coming up. the
marker is below ground level - it has presumably been excavated.
by the time of ashoka (about four centuries after buddha) the site had
already been overgrown by jungle, but ashoka established a temple complex
which was a thriving buddhist monastery for many centuries but fell into
disuse after the large-scale disappearance of buddhism from the region
around the turn of the millenium.
so the site was again overgrown with jungle by the 16th c.; rediscovered in
1896 by british-nepali group; UN interest since U Thant visit (1967) - since
then almost all Secretary-Generals seem to have visited (see page on
UN and Lumbini); Kenzo Tange
master plan in 1970 (map below), still being implemented.
it starts to rain at the mayadevi temple.
a big group of women, who had
come to pray for rains, start to dance in the nearby grove.
it starts to rain as we are in the mayadevi complex and we get drenched.
apparently it has been a drought-like situation - this is the first time it's
rained in a month and the harvest was
in serious jeopardy. as we are there a group of village women from the
neighbouring ardauli village have gathered under a huge banian and they start
to dance and sing - we walk over amid the pouring rain and binoy
stands under someone's umbrella and makes a
video of their dance.
we walk back to our bicycles in the rain but it eases even as we start
cycling. on the way back,
we make it from the turn to the lumbini complex back to the
hotel in very good speed - 18km in 38 minutes (avg ~30kph).
map of lumbini area (click to enlarge). the map reflects the
UN sponsored Kenzo Tange plan, many parts of which are incomplete.
so the canal crossing the road
coming from bhairahawa, has not been built yet and i overshot the turn
while looking for it. (source: nepal tourism
foldout on lumbini)
onwards to tansen
now it's raining again and
anyhow the stretch to butwal is boring, so we load the bicycles into the car
and head down the highway to butwal. here we need to visit the RTO to get
road permits made. by now it's nearly 4pm and the sky looks darker than it
should because of the rainclouds. we have a late lunch of momos. mutton and
beer, and we start for tansen.
the hills
start immediately and 3-4 km on, we get off the bikes and start riding through
the light drizzle.
riding on the hills in the jhumsa valley
above butwal.
the lush green valleys along the jhumsa khola.
the sky and the hills were grey but the greenery was soothing;
we rode amid the occasional drizzle till it was almost dark
(actually, till we got tired
of a very long climb).
it's spectacularly beautiful with the dark sky with scudded clouds and the
lush green mountains disappearing amid wisps of mist. a beautiful mountain
river, muddy and turbulent, is passing by - at one point it drops some
fifteen feet over a jagged edge and what is amazing is that there is a thin
long pedestrian bridge hanging just above the rapids. we learn later that
this is the jhumsa river - we shall be following it for many kilometers- the
road is mostly climbing, with occasional descents, but after some 5 km, a
long relentless ascent starts. it's also getting dark and after keeping at
it for some 5 km - nearly 40 minutes - we put the bicycles into the car -
only to discover a long downhill that starts some 200m later...
tansen is a mountain town - very high up at 1280m and we have a 4km climb from the
highway - and crash for the night at "Hotel The White lake" (yes, that's the
way they have it).
today's coverage:
see maps of nepal page for more maps.
