A lot of the road I had been on before, but heading the other way, I didn't recognise it. Dussa, Jokihara, I vaguely remembered. I had my chain tightened in Muglin where I turned south for Bharatpur, but I would not have been able to pick the town out from an identity parade.
The river widened beside me, maybe to about 80m across. The kilometres clicked by. Kabilas, Gaidakot. Rivers, jungle, mountains. Nepal really had it all.
I stopped for some chowmein in Dumkauli and looked at the map. I had decided to leave Nepal at the border town of Sonauli. I would have one last night in Nepal, at Lumbini, and then cross tomorrow.
This would be close to the city of Gorakpur in India. I could then decide whether to ride to Delhi, a journey I suspected would take upwards of two and a half days or try and catch the train.
A nice surprise happened soon after. To get to Lumbini, I thought I would have to head northwest to Bhutwal, and then turn south. About 120km. Shortly after lunch though, a road that wasn't marked on my map appeared on my left. Lumbinin 50km. It looked a good road. I even got 5 minutes of free wifi there. I turned Ambliss's front wheel and took the shortcut offered.
Lumbini was the birth place of the Lord Buddha, Siddartha Gautama. It was only 20km from the border and so I felt a perfect place to stay. I got there about 3pm, found a hotel, and headed to the park.
It was eerily still and quiet. Its close season anyway at the moment, but the mist and fog that was still in the air, giving everything a flat washed out look, and seemed to just swallow the few people aound.
At the gate a small monk greeted me. 'Oh my God! Wow! A Royal Enfied. Go Man!'. I looked at him - there was something a bit strange about his face, his features didn't look quite right, he was obviously blind in one eye. 'You can park your bike up there. Cool man'. Hodgkinsons diesiese perhaps? He seemed as serenely happy yet full of humour and life as the best monks I had seen.
I drove up through the gardens and parked my bike. Lumbini was where the Buddha was born, but he was raised somewhere else, and performed all the major acts of his enlightened career further south in India. Nothing really significant happened here, apart from his mother, giving birth to him in a sacred pool.
The story of Lumbini itself has always fascinated me though. The Holy Emperor Ashoka came here around the third century BC, and planted a pillar on the spot where he was born. A monastery grew up around it, and flourished for 900 years. Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist Scholar visited in the 7th Century (the TV series Monkey was based on his journey), but it was starting to get run down. Soon after, the monastery was abandoned. No one really seems to know why.
For almost 1200 years, it lay abandoned, hidden and forgotten. Then, using Hiuen Tsangs notes about the area, British and Indian Archaeologists started seriously looking for the site. I find it absolutely fascinating that Europeans used a 1300 year old manuscript from China, that was written after a 30 year journey, 1200 years after Buddhas death, to find his birth place in Nepal. Gandhi said that the greatest gift the British gave the Indian's were their history, but it was not an easy gift to give.
The temple was pretty much deserted. Trees and rose bushes appeared out of the mist. Ruins of the original monastery lay tumbled about. A few Japanese Buddhist Nuns, dressed in white, walked around. Some Monks, dressed both in Mahayana Red and Therevaden Yellow meditated under a tree.
I sat for a while too, thinking. It felt holy, special, sacred, but empty too. Everything was pale, washed out, or fading into white. More like a graveyard than a birthplace. There were ghosts here too, I felt sure. I shivered and hurried back to Ambliss.
At the gate, the half blind disfigured Monk grinned at me. 'Oh My God! Its the Enfield. You like the Park? You give me some money?'. I handed over 100rps. It felt like a small price to pay to leave.
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