Lumbini

Hello from Nepal,

Our journey to Nepal began less than smoothly! Exhausted, we headed to bed at 21:30 with plans to explore Varanasi for a final day before our night train left at 00:35 the following evening. When I awoke during the night I had a startling realisation that for the dates to match up, our train must leave in the early hours of tomorrow - just an hour away (not another 24 hours like we thought)! Ross was rudely awoken; one check of the ticket and we were frantically packing our bags. The hostel managed to book us a auto-rickshaw and by some miracle we arrived at the station on time; thankfully not missing our train which has days of waiting lists. However, Indian trains aren’t not known for their punctuality so with a ever growing delay we finally boarded our 00:35 train at 03:30 - only 3 hours late. Or as Ross put it, 21 hours earlier than expected! Settled down in our beds, with our luggage locked up, back to bed we went.

At 9:00, the train arrived in Gorakhpur, which is 96 km south of the Sonauli land border into Nepal. We boarded a local bus, luckily air conditioned, and made the three hour journey to the border. When we arrived we managed to walk straight into the Nepalese side. Border control quickly sent us walking back a kilometre into India to get our visa departure stamp before we could buy our Nepalese visa. A 45 minute taxi journey and we had finally made it to our first stop in Nepal.

Our first impressions of Nepal are in some ways vastly different to India. Having left big cites and reached the rural town of Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, it feels much more peaceful and a welcome break from the constant beeping of horns. We hired bicycles, for £1 each, to explore the Lumbini Development Zone. This is a 3km by 2km park homing the Maya Devi Temple, named after the Buddha’s mother, which marks the exact location of the Buddha’s birth. Surrounding the temple were hundreds of Nepalese prayer flags sprawling out from a central tree. Cycling along the canal felt like the Epcot centre of Buddhism. All the Buddhist nations have a temple, each trying to ‘out temple’ one another! Cambodia’s was exceptionally elaborate with tall spires and entwined dragons whilst Thailand’s was a intricate building painted entirely in white. Located just outside the main complex was the World Peace Pagoda; an impressive white stupa built by Japanese Buddhists.

We are enjoying the calmness here and look forward to our next stop at Pokhara where we will get ourselves prepared for trekking in the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. Our route is now carefully planned and reviewed to ensure safe trekking in well populated areas; unlike the unfortunate people on todays news who were stuck in a storm attempting to climb a mountain that has only ever been summited 30 times. We are very exited for the next week and will hopefully have some wonderful mountain pictures on our return if the weather stays as sunny as forecasted.

Sending love to all at home. Thank you for all your messages and emails, we love hearing from you.

Love R and D xxx