The Birth Place of Lord Buddha Lumbini

One of the Many Temples in Lumbini

Finally after me standing with the bike for an hour, being crowded around with people all looking and touching the bike, we finish with the border crossing into Nepal and head towards Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha, we don’t have any gps maps now as we didn’t end up getting them for Nepal so this should be interesting.  The border guys tell us that Lumbini is easy to get to and about 30min on a good road, define good road, well by Indian standards it is ok and we do arrive there within about 45min.   We check into a great little guesthouse called Sunflower, run by a Chinese family, it backs onto mustard fields and Nepal so far definitely seems quieter with less people than India, bonus, we are ready for no horns and some quiet.

We met a lady here who has been travelling on her own for 2 ½ years, she is 70 years old, sold everything she owned and got a backpack and took off on an adventure, she was a real inspiration, she had been to so many countries, places Im not sure we will ever get to, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran to name a few, wow, good for her.

Off to the Meval Devi temples, this is a very large area, all fenced off that houses Buddha temples from countries around the world, including of course “the” temple where it is said that Lord Buddha was born.  It is still a work in progress however some of the other temples were amazing, the Royal Thai Temple, the Chinese temple and the Korean Temple and the Japanese to name a few were really spectacular.  

Prayer flags dancing in the wind

Maya Devi Temple The exact spot were Lord Buddha was born

Back to our guesthouse for a cold beer, a few hours of reading and a “massage”, yes they have 7 massage beds set up here and for only 600 nepal rupees for 1 hour we are in, what a great massage it turned out to be, even with all my bruising they were really knowledgable and it ended up being more of a shiatsu with ointment for my wounds, just what we both needed after surviving India.

A huge prayer  wheel at the Chinese
 Temple