Lumbini to Sonauli

We departed the luscious resort of Pokhara under cover of darkness by the tourist bus. Wholly disillusioned by our victory in snatching a cheap ticket, we realised at the bus park that our ticket went to an equally difficult to pronounce destination, in the opposite direction. We relented to pay the hideous asking price in order to avoid having to wait until the following day. The decent little 24 seater bus shuttled us out of town, picking up a group dressed like they were off to a wedding, funeral, or some kind of festive party, and other solitary locals along the way. After about 3 hours we stopped just after a village and on hearing the bags from the roof being thrown over to a larger bus parked next to us we gathered that it was time to change vehicles. Smuggling in swiftly to ensure a seat, the bus filled up with a new crowd of locals bound for the border town. We stopped for lunch in a tiny road side village and packed in as much dal bhat as we could fit in the 20 minute interval. Rattling along for a few more hours in the purple painted bus wreck, we came to a fork in the road where we disembarked, happy that our bags appeared to be intact we boarded another battered automobile bound for Lumbini. The unstable seating arrangement held in position by pieces of rope was far from comforting, and the aisles and floor were lined with peanut shells just like the Long Bar at Raffles in Singapore. It was a slow trip, lengthened hideously by the no-apparent-reason extended stoppages to pick people up. We were dropped at the temple-end of town in Lumbini, the birth place of Buddha. A village made of dust, straw, enormous numbers of goats and pesty flies that could educate those at Ayers Rock. On the bus we had met two sisters from Holland and together we walked up the narrow street, being carefully eyeballed by the locals and shouted at cautiously by small children, after viewing what we soon realised to be the only guest house in this end of town. Returning there shortly after due to a lack of options, we checked into the shabby, thick, dark, pink painted room, dropped the bags and hit the street. There was a very limited choice of eateries and no where that could sell the cold beer we craved after 10 hours spent in transit, so we settled for a couple of chai teas and sweets sold from another fly infested cabinet in a tea shack, which appeared to be a meeting place for the men to sit and chat. Opting to take an alternative route home to lighten our moods and give this famous village a chance to alter our first impression, we strolled through streets lined with bamboo cane and straw thatched homes, up towards the white-washed mosque only to be bombarded by over-excited, shrieking, pushing borderline aggressive children, bumping and pulling on our clothes. As they followed us Pied-Piper style back to the bus park where there was a game of volley ball going on we managed to regain some personal space. Eating dinner in the roof top restaurant of the guest house provided us with more local cultural experiences with the call to prayer echoing out and Hindi music playing further along the main street. As the electricity faded periodically the small lad/waiter belonging to the hotel would come out and light tilly, kerosene lamps.

After a night plagued by scurrying rats as opposed to the usual mosquito threat, we foolishly disregarded the offer of hiring bicycles and headed over to the gardens where the collection of world temples is housed, but first and most importantly to the temple built over, and now housing the original foundations belonging to Buddha's birth place marked by the placing of a green painted single stone, protected by glass casing. There were other ruins of the original structures on the site dating back to the second century, and streams of coloured prayer flags stretched between every possible tree in their hundreds and thousands. Lamas (monks) in their deep red robes, were in the gardens, walking, praying and meditating under the canopies of a couple of the larger trees. It was a very serene atmosphere. We walked the long driveways out to a 10Km square area where there are a collection of temples donated by various Asian countries in their own architectural style. We picked up a plate of wok fried noodles from a young entrepeneur, and watched an old guy across from us sat in the dirt with a round basket housing two cobra snakes. He lifted the lid and taunted the brown snake into standing tall and puffing out its collar. A display of ignorant cruelty and a terrible money spinner, especially a snake-charmer without the wah wah musical instrument, we didn't entertain him. Worn out from the walking we made our way casually back to the hotel to check out and hopped on the exact same bus for the even more painfully slow journey back. In the bustling dusty town we fought our way past rickshaw drivers and swiftly jumped in the back of a left hand drive relic of a jeep, with as many people as possible piling inside and hanging off the back, bound for the Indian boarder town of Sonauli. We crawled out into the standard chaos of the border town, changed our pitiful amount of Nepalese rupees for indian currency and walked on through the gate into India. Unquestioned, unobstructed, and with no direction we missed the customs house and our exit stamps out of Nepal and battled our way through the thick traffic and mile-long queue of trucks. We were waved under some eaves along the roadside to a wooden tressel table, which was the official immigration checkpoint. Signing a form, getting our stamps and a cricket score update, we moved along a short distance before being accosted by a bus driver at the pick-up stop for Gorakpur. Refusing to pay for a ticket on a 5 hour trip without a seat, we agreed to wait 10 minutes for the next one. When we finally hurtled off we realised we had completely forgotten the craziness of the Indian roads, but oh what joy! A straight, flat road lay ahead of us, and the bus gunned on, kicking up dust, honking its way past oncoming trucks, bikes, and swerving fearlessly around statuesque cows loitering mindlessly in the middle of the road.