During our travels we have directly and indirectly come into contact with various aspects of Bhuddism. Through interacting with locals, visiting temples and actively seeking out information on meditation and philosophy we have grown a healthy respect for the Bhuddist conception of life. When we realised that Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, was only a 50km detour on our way into India we felt compelled to visit.

Father Cherian, one of the priests from Navodaya school, was headed the same way, so we caught a lift until the Lumbini turn-off. With spiritualism on the brain, we had a great chat all about Christianity in India, and learnt that Catholicism was around long before the English turned up, and was possibly introduced by St Thomas - one of the original Apostles over 2000 years ago!

We caught a bus for the last leg into the Lumbini Bazar and found a guesthouse. The owner of this place was a bit of a character. He told us all about how 30 years ago, the Nepal government officially declared Lumbini a cultural tourism development area, and booted all of the local villagers out to the nearby market area. Like many in Nepal, he was a bit upset with the government, not only for this but for a whole list of things that we won't go into here... We decided the development area wasn't such a bad idea and prepared ourselves to check it all out the next day.

Lumbini is definitely a very spiritual place for people of all faiths. The village was full of many devotees and curious travelers alike, mingling together to pay respect to such an inspirational and fundamentally peaceful man.

The new Lumbini village is designed around a central canal. On the west side are several temples and meditation centres from the Mahayana school of Bhuddism, including those built by Chinese, South Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Burmese, Nepali, Indian and even German, Austrian and French Bhuddist societies. On the east side we felt slightly more at home with structures from the Theravada school of Bhuddism, including those built by Thai, Burmese, Indian, Nepali, Sri Lankan and Cambodian Bhuddist societies.

It was fascinating to compare the subtly different architectural styles from each country. As we rode pushbikes around to most of the complexes, it was like a revision course for every temple we've seen since leaving Australia. Typically, the Cambodian temple was still heavily under construction five years past its
completion date, but we wandered around anyway and even practiced some Khmer with one of the Cambodian monks.

At one end of the canal we checked out the World Peace Pagoda, where we met a group of young pilgriming monks. They were originally from Ladakh, in the Tibetan influenced part of Northern India. At the other end we finished the day with a late afternoon stroll around the sacred garden.

The world heritage listed sacred garden is the focal point of Lumbini, and the reason that millions of pilgrims come from all over the world to visit. It is centered around the exact point where Prince Siddhartha Bhudda was born. The point is marked by an oddly shaped stone, which is covered by a heavy duty bullet-proof glass case. The Maya Devi temple was once built around this point, but since left to ruin. A new temple was built more recently over the ruins as part of the development project and is, for now anyway, surprisingly humble.

Maya Devi temple is surrounded by a patchwork of old ruined temples, as well as the pond where Bhudda's mother, Maya Devi, apparently bathed just before giving birth. The whole area had a powerfully strong and spiritual feeling, which was amplified by several groups of devotees meditating and chanting in various native tongues. We took half an hour to sit and watch beneath an enormous, majestic old tree, and couldn't help but become overcome with a unique feeling of peacefulness. Just as we were about to leave, a pilgrim from Mongolia wished us good fortune with a perfectly pressed leaf that he had picked up earlier in the gardens. We floated back to our guesthouse, not at all bothered by any of the usual tourist touts..

Getting away the next day wasn't as easy as we imagined, as the popular Nepali government had called a transport strike, and closed the only road to the Indian border. We were a bit worried about missing our train to Delhi, but just in time it all somehow resolved and we got away and across the border.

So, we've just picked up our train tickets from another extremely hospitable Indian Priest. An associate of our priestly friends in Nepal, he was in charge of a Women's Teaching College in Gorakhpur, Northern India. He even offered us lunch and a bed for a few hours rest, before driving us to the station to board our first Indian train!