Happy B-Day Buddha and Lee

So I have been found out. It is true that I am indeed severely behind schedule on the blogging. In fact, I am almost two weeks behind but I should not rush these things.

This is a special entry. The day of Lee's birthday (May 20th) is also the same day that Buddha's birthday was celebrated this year. Buddha, the enlightened spiritual prophet of Buddhism and a huge figure in Hinduism. No one knows the exact date of his birth some 2500! years ago but it is celebrated on the full moon in May. So to celebrate we made plans to go to the city of Lumbini in Nepal which is the birthplace of Buddha. It was about 4 hours drive from Chitwan. It was a little more than 4 hours however for us to get there. Rishi, Bamdev, Bamdev's kid, Krishna, Cynthia, Jenna, the driver, and I squeezed into the truck. We had to make one pit stop at the Indian border. It was really inconvenient. Apparently, India has stopped giving oil en bulk to Nepal because the State owned Nepal Oil was never able to pay India back so India just gives an allowance. This translates into HUGE shortages and lines like I have never seen. All the gas stations in Kathmandu are guarded by soldiers of the Royal army with rifles slung (carelessly in my opinion) over their shoulders. An alternative option to waiting in lines is to wait in the line to go to India and get gas there. So, Cynthia, Jenna, Bamdev and his kid, and I waited at the border crossing town for about an hour or so while the rest of our group went into India. Imagine Tijuana, Mexico with a lot more people.

Lumbini is actually a huge walled-off compound. I mean huge, though. Krishna actually persuaded the guy guarding the gate into Lumbini to let us take the car because it was too far to walk to the main site. Meanwhile, hundreds of other people are passing us into the compound on foot. We drove straight up to the main area which I believe is the center of the compound. It was immensely crowded because it was Buddha's bday and the crowds, although annoying at times, added a certain important ambiance to the site. There was a large bizarre and then past that there were brick ruins strewn about with a larger square building (much more recent) in the middle of those ruins. The ruins are of various ages I believe with some being remnants of houses and some being the sites where Buddha's disciples meditated. Those were neat. They were raised circles of brick set up in a grid. I could just see 30 or so disciples meditating for hours 2000 years ago. The building in the middle was built probably to protect the actual stone ruin of Buddha's birth house. There was a long line to go in and pray at the site but Krishna got us inside to get a quick look at it. Of course, there was not much to see. It is basically just a pile of stones but it is crazy that people will make pilgrimages just to see that pile. Just next to the ruins was a magnificent tree with Buddhist flags coiling throughout the leaves and branches. It was supposed to be the tree (site of tree?) where Buddha used to meditate. There were really old Buddhists just leaning up against it and there was a small shrine tucked into the trunk of the tree where people were leaving offerings. I can not even imagine being able to interact with such a significant site if it were in America. The tree would probably be sealed inside a giant air-vacuumed cube. I imagine that you would not be able to get within 100 ft. of Buddha's actual birthplace if it were in America.

The really cool part of this compound is the collection of temples located throughout that were built by different nations. The first one we saw was the temple from China. It was pretty cool but I have seen so many Chinese temples that I am not easily impressed. Then we saw the South Korean temple next door which was still being completed. It was cool because the concrete had not been painted. It was huge and had an even more powerful look because of the dull gray color. Then we drove by a smaller temple that looked western with just a sliver of the orient (slightly raised roof vertexes). In fact, the major color scheme was off-white and pink! We found out it was French and we could not go inside its gates to see more. Off-white and pink...what were they thinking. However, just after that we saw the coolest temple and most ostentatious by far. It is hard to describe. It had a strong Indonesian appearance with highly detailed images and paintings all over the main temple structure. It also had sculptures in the temple and throughout the surrounding premises that were life sized sculptures of Buddha doing various things like lying down or sitting in the lotus position etc. etc. We found out that that temple was from Germany! Afterwards, we made a quick round of the single golden temple of Myanmar and the all-white temple from Thailand. Finally, we saw the centerpiece which was a coordinated effort by India, Nepal, and China I believe. It was the World Peace Temple. It was actually relatively simple. It was all white and was just a large white dome with golden statues of Buddha on each side. International World Peace flags were all around the temple.