My travel diaries
Sunday 27 May, 2007 - Lumbini, Nepal
I get up at the crack of dawn and am out exploring Lumbini by 6am. It's hard to know how to describe this place as it's like nowhere I've ever visited in my life. It's certainly one of the stranger places I've visited on my travels, a pilgrimage site for Buddhists worldwide, yet curiously quiet and peaceful, which suits me well.
At its centre is the Maya Devi temple, apparently marking the precise spot Maya Devi gave birth to Siddhartha Gautama in 563 BC, a rich prince who gave up his privileged life of servants and palaces in his early 30s to become a wandering hermit. A few years later, while meditating underneath a pipal tree in Bihar, India, he attained enlightenment and passed into nirvana, a state where all a person's suffering ends and total peace and tranquillity is reached. Not content with this notable achievement, Prince Siddhartha then spent the remainder of his long life sharing his philosophy with others. He became known as The Buddha, which means awakened one .
Buddhism outlived its founder's death, but it didn't survive in India, where the Buddha spent most of his life, because its preaching of equality put it at odds with the rigid caste system enforced by the dominant Hindu religion. Instead it spread south to Sri Lanka and east through Burma and Thailand to Japan, where it evolved into Zen, northwards into China, and back west again through Tibet. At some point it again reached India, though this time in the mountainous region of Ladakh in the far northwest of the country, continued into Pakistan and even reached as far as Afghanistan, where giant Buddhist statues were destroyed by the Muslim Taliban in the early 21 st century. In the 19 th century, explorers and empire builders rediscovered Buddhism as they crossed Asia, applied scholarship to its history and brought it back to the western world.
Buddhist philosophy proved to be a welcome antidote to the excesses of western materialism. The Buddha taught that the root of all human suffering is craving: the desire for material things and achievements. If we can banish craving, we can banish suffering, and the Buddha's teaching included a method to achieve this end. In the 20 th century, with improved communications, it became a popular philosophy worldwide, and now there are literally hundreds of different Buddhist sects, religions and philosophies across the globe. Unlike other major religions which have split apart in this way, such as Christianity and Islam, Buddhism does not appear to be exclusive. No one version declares itself to be the only true version, denouncing followers of other versions as heathens and infidels.
Lumbini itself is a model for this tolerance of rival denominations. Surrounding the Maya Devi temple and its sacred gardens is a large rectangular area known as the Lumbini Development Zone, set aside for the building of temples, monasteries and meditation centres for every major division of Buddhism. The Royal Thai Buddhist Monastery sits happily alongside the Myanmar Golden Temple, the Korean Buddhist Temple is undisturbed by its close proximity to the Zhong Hua Chinese Buddhist Monastery, and none of them are particularly bothered by the upstart Austrian Geden International Foundation setting itself up across the way.
And that's pretty much Lumbini for you: an undistinguished brick building sitting among ancient ruins, and surrounded by a large grassy building site of curious temples. Along the perimeter of the development zone is a road containing hotels interspersed at large distances apart. A single short street of shops and houses protruding from the perimeter known as Lumbini Bazaar appears to be the only residential part of Lumbini.
At 6 o'clock the temperature is cool, but I know it will get very hot within a couple of hours. Outside our hotel, beyond the northern perimeter of the development zone, is an area of wetlands known as the Lumbini Crane Sanctuary, where the rare Sarus Crane is supposed to be found. Although I don't see any, I immediately stumble across a herd of about 8 or 10 "blue bulls", actually a species of antelope also known as nilgai. These big beasts are iron grey in colour with white undersides, and possess a distinctive short, tufty mane beneath their necks. For a long time they were never hunted by inhabitants of the Terai region simply because of their name: Hindus believed them to be relatives of the cow and therefore sacred. This is changing, however, and these animals appear nervous, because as soon as I get my camera out they're off.
I explore the Japanese "Peace Pagoda", a giant stupa in the middle of the crane sanctuary, before making my way south through the development zone. Much of the place is under construction, including a big pagoda style temple, which is currently drab and grey, but will doubtless be as colourful as its neighbours before long.
Every time I stop for a photo, a school child on a bicycle seems to turn up and demand from me my name and where I come from. In an un-buddhist like manner I get a bit irritated by this and contemplate giving them a false name, but resist the temptation after recalling the time I told a hawker at the Valley of Kings in Egypt my name was Biggus Dickus. For the next ten minutes I was chased around the tombs by a man shouting Biggus Dickus everywhere I went, much to the surprise of the hundreds of tourists about that day.
I was determined that wouldn't happen as I approached the sacred gardens of the Maya Devi temple. After seeing no one but children as I walked through the grasslands of the development zone, I find myself surrounded by hundreds of Indian pilgrims. The temple itself is a distinctly unphotogenic modern red brick building in an area of ancient ruins. I buy a ticket to go inside, but as it costs a staggeringly western $1 per photograph to take pictures inside the temple compound, I find my craving for that particular material thing is easily held in check.
I enter the temple at the same time as a big group of pilgrims, so there's a big queue to see the actual spot where Maya Devi gave birth to the Buddha. I decide not to queue and instead look across from a few feet away, and watch the pilgrims bow their heads and drop petals. I feel a bit out of place anyway, clearly being the only tourist and the only white face among them. Siling later tells me there's a plaque, a statue of Maya Devi and a footprint left by the Buddha at the moment he was born. I walk around the back of the temple to see the pillar erected by Ashoka, the Buddhist emperor of India in the 3 rd century BC. It looks a bit like the funnel of a steam locomotive.
After a quick breakfast of eggs in Lumbini Bazaar I buy a bottle of water and hurry back to our hotel on foot. By the time I get back at 9.30 I'm sweating like a pig, and Uttam orders me to have a shower before we set off back to Kathmandu. Bikram drives us to meet Tina and Siling in the lobby of a hotel they've been reconnoitring back near the Bazaar. We're finally on the road back to Kathmandu at 10.30.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Next
Message board >>
- Bookmark site with
del.icio.us - Post site to
Facebook