Lumbini and Nepal’s Kapilvastu

Golden statues of the baby Buddha on pedestals of lotus leaves with one hand pointing skyward and one toward the earth, stand as high as 50 feet above Lubini’s monastic zone. This image of the infant Buddha taking his first steps is the symbol for this expansive historic site in southern Nepal.

The fact that Lumbini is the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama is the lone factor that drew me to this city just north of the border with India, but it is not the only thing I found fascinating about this area.

Quite the contrary, I discovered the people in the geographically dispersed and loosely organized city were even more fascinating than the monastic population, which I found to be surprisingly scant.

In addition to the Buddha’s birthplace and the approximately 8 square kilometers that are designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Lumbini area also is home to the ruins of a town called Kapilvastu, although there is some debate whether the Kaplivastu where Siddhartha spent the first 29 years of his living as a prince, a husband and a father is actually in Nepal or just south of the Indian border (a site I hope to visit on the second leg of this pilgrimage).

Arriving in Lumbini

Logistically speaking, getting to Lumbini is not very difficult. It is a $10 bus ride from Pokhara that typically takes about 8 hours, but our trip was delayed by slightly more than an hour after the bus pulled over at a stop and a crew broke out saws and welding torches and went to work on the axle of the bus. It’s amazing the kind of beating these buses take on the rocky roads of Nepal and keep on plugging along.

Needless to say, the bus got moving again and we made it to Lumbini as the sun was setting over the land.

I had originally intended to try to stay at a monastery, but because it was getting dark and I was starting to get the impression that this unfamiliar city was a lot larger than it appears on Google Maps, I decided to take a room at a local hotel with good rates called Siddhartha’s Guest House.

I took a walk as the night set in and started to get a feel for the actual size of the Heritage site. I turned back from a locked gate at the southern entrance to the site and made my way back to the hotel.

That is when I met Sulav, the owner’s son, who would become a close friend and yoga buddy during my nearly weeklong stay at the hotel. We started talking and he suggested we continue over dinner at the main part of town, which is just shy of a kilometer from where the hotel is located.

We walked north to a local vegetarian restaurant, where an Israeli traveler was making a sketch of the restaurant owner’s daughter.

We ordered mo-mos and veg cutlets and while we waited, the Israeli made a sketch of Sulav. Meanwhile an Indian from Bangalore named Avinash also made his way into the cafe, sitting directly across from me. The four of us made conversation as we dined on the delectable and incredibly inexpensive (by Nepal standards) delights.

On the walk home, Sulav invited me to join him for morning meditation and yoga, but I would unfortunately fail to get up for my alarm like I should have and missed the appointment.

Maya Devi Temple and the Monastic Zone

The massive Lumbini site, which is still largely under development, consists of a few major zones. By far, the most important one being the Maya Devi Temple site, which encompasses the marker stone and ruins of the centuries-old temple built around it, as well as the pond where the Buddha’s mother Maha Maya, bathed before giving birth and a very old and massive bodhi tree.

This site, which attracts approximately 1 million visitors per year is bordered to the north by the east and west monastic zones, which house dozens of monasteries and temples built by the people of various Buddhist faiths from around the globe.

There is also a bus park which has a small market where local vendors sell various Buddhist icons, mala beads and bracelets, sweets, chaat and other Nepali street food. At he very north, in a nearly undeveloped part of the site, is a Japanese Peace Pagoda, identical to the ones I visited in Darjeeling and Pokhara.

On my first full day in Lumbini, I toured this massive expanse, walking more than 30,000 steps, or roughly 24 kilometers in my open-toed Adidas slip-ons, You may think this a poor choice of footwear, but considering the number of times you remove your shoes to enter temples, it was really the most suitable option. Plus there was one point when I got off the beaten path and ended up shin-deep in the mud of an only partially developed road.

I did the main attraction first, due in no small part to the fact that it was closest to where I was staying and was the first thing I came to on the as-yet unexplored site.

It costs foreign visitors 600 Nepali rupees, or roughly $5 USD, to enter the Maya Devi site, which is no small amount for a traveler on a budget. And this a per diem fee; so if you are ever in Lumbini and planning to stay several days, you’ll want to make your limited visits to the birthplace site as meaningful as possible.

I proceeded directly to the temple, which is actually a building built around the historic ruins, and circumambulated the ancient structures clockwise before making my way up to the marker stone. While there, I remembered my friend Tenzing Drolma, the young nun whom I had met at the Dalai Lama’s teachings in McLeod Ganj. I offered her prayer to help end the suffering of all sentient beings and the placed thd Indian rupees she had given me near the birth site, along with my own prayer and rupees.

Outside the temple, I toured the grounds, but mostly found myself thronged by groups of tourists wanting to take selfies with the foreigner. I tried to be accommodating and good-spirited about all this, but I was a pilgrim seeking a bit of serenity at a sacred spot and felt like a circus attraction. Plus when “one selfie” turns into dozens of group pictures and that leads to holding hands with teenagers for videos that will probably be posted on Tik Tok, it gets to be a little too much at times.

So I retreated inward and sat zazen by the pool. I could feel the turmoil die down some as I sat in meditation. I was, at one point, joined by two other people sitting on both my left and right but at least no one was asking me to pose for them.

When I got up and visited the Ashoka Pillar outside the temple, the selfies started ramping up again, but I was a little more Zen about it.

After leaving the Maya Devi site, I continued to the southeast portion of the monastic zone, visiting the elaborate Cambodian monastery with its dragons and the Myanmar Golden Temple before looping around to the west side of the complex where the Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Euorpean temples are all located.

Each temple has its own unique flair, featuring depictions of the life and accomplishments of Siddhartha Guatama, both before and after his enlightenment, amid well-manicured gardens and ornate temples and stupas. Some temples permitted photos while others requested no photos be taken inside the sacred spaces.

Just getting to all the temples involved an incredible amount of walking and more stopping for selfies with Nepali Zoomers.

After visiting the entirety of the west side, I made my way north, stopping for some chaat and a sweet that had a cherry-like flavor at at the local market. I then headed north for the Peace Pagoda and back south to the northeast corner of the monastic zone that I had not gotten to yet. It was during this stretch of walking that I ended up nearly knee deep in mud.

But the mud was worth it as one of the last temples I visited was the Royal Thai Monastery, which features an entirely white stone temple, upon the roof ot which about a dozen bright green parrots perched and fluttered about playfully. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had witnessed all day.

Dusk was start to settle as I stopped at the veg restaurant for more mo-mos and some cauliflower chilly before the final stretch back to the hotel.

Morning Yoga

That night, I spoke with Sulav, apologizing for my inability to get myself out of bed for morning yoga that day. He took it well and said he would be able to drive me on a tour of the historic ruins west of Lumbini if I wanted.

It was a fair price so I took him up on the offer, but first, I got up and did the yoga and meditation.

Sulav has not been practicing long, but he is 100 percent committed to getting up before 5 a.m. and either jogging or walking the nearly 2 kilometers from the hotel to the Maya Devi site and doing some meditation, followed by pranayama and sun salutations as the sun rises over the eastern horizon.

During the remainder of my days in Lumbini, he kept me invigorated to do a daily sunrise sadhana, and I introduced him to some yogic techniques he had not practiced a great deal. On day one, we focused on pranayama, followed by a standing Virabhadrasana flow on day two, some backbending on day three and balancing poses on day four.

While I mentioned that foreigners are supposed to pay 600 rupees per day to enter the Maya Devi site, Sulav got me in for free on all but the final day, when we opted to practice at a nearby temple.

It was definitely invigorating to be doing yoga on a daily basis as I have basically fallen out of a regular practice and there are no real places to practice in Lumbini, as far as I could tell (and Sulav did not know of any either).

Later in the week, he showed me a new resort hotel property his family is developing and said they will offer a yoga hall there. He even invited me to come back and teach there when it is open and sought my suggestions on what they should offer.

It’s definitely a very enticing offer – to teach yoga in the place where the Buddha was born would be an incredible experience.

Kapilvastu, Kudan and the Ashoka Pillars

Following our breakfast at the Siddhartha Guest House’s rooftop cafe, we set out for the ancient ruins to the east of Lumbini.

The first site we visited was Kudan, which is the place where the Buddha, after attaining enlightenment, met his father (the king of the Shakyas), his wife, his son and his step-mother (his mother Maya Devi died 7 days after giving birth) for the first time since he had renounced his princely inheritance.

Kudan, which refers to the steps of a giant, is so named because the hills where the buildings at the site are located resemble stepping stones of a giant.

The structures at not just Kudan, but the other sites as well, have been recreated from their originals over the millennia, but the remnants are still very old by all standards. I’ve visited Inca ruins in Peru, which predated the arrival of the Spanish in the 1600s as well as the Kuelap ruins, which are slightly older than the Inca sites, but all this pales in comparison to the age of these structures.

Consider that the Buddha lived in approximately 600 BCE. While none of the structures are actually from that era, some of the buildings and the pillars were constructed in the 3rd Century BCE by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka, a devout Buddhist who traveled the land preserving historic relics of the Buddha’s lifetime in brick stupas. In many cases, it is these relics from 2,300 years ago that survive.

Following Kudan, we visited Gotihawa, which is the site of an Ashoka Pillar that was dedicated not to Siddhartha Gautama, but one of the other 27 Buddhas of this age named Krakuchanda Buddha. It is not in great condition and the ruins discovered at the site are covered now with a layer of plastic and vegetation and are awaiting a more thorough archaeological excavation. There is, however, a well in which brick from the Ashokan era can be seen.

After Gotihawa, Sulav and I visited the Nepali Kapilvastu (or Tilaurakot as it is also known), the nearby museum and the twin stupas about half kilometer east of the main site.

During this tour, we saw the site, which is believed to be the capital city of the Shakya clan, at least from the 3rd Century BCE to at least a few hundreds years in the Current Era. It is not clear if this is the actual site where Siddhartha Gautama’s family ruled from in the 6th Century BCE as there is another site just a few kilometers away on the southern side of the Indian border that may have been the Shakya capital during the Buddha’s lifetime. I have yet to visit there at the writing of this.

The museum, which was pretty cheap, even for a foreigner ticket, housed all kinds of pottery and other artifacts collected from the archaeological excavations of the site over the years.

Our final stop of the day was at Araurakot, where a temple is built to house another Ashoka Pillar dedicated to the Kanakamuni Buddha, another of the 27 historic Buddhas of this era. This pillar, despite being broken is remarkably well-preserved.

Following our tour of the ruins, Sulav and I made a side trip to see his sweetie, Saru, in her hometown north of Lumbini, where we had cold coffees and snacks at a local restaurant before returning to Lumbini.

The Hand of Compassion

Over the course of the next three days, I would find myself volunteering at a free public health clinic being hosted by the local International Buddhist Society hospital and organized by the Taiwan-based Tzu Chi non-profit organization.

Volunteers from Taiwan, Singapore, Maylasia and other parts of Southeast Asia were present administering general practice, traditional Chinese medicine (acupuncture), gynecological, pediatric and dental services free of charge to the local Nepalis. Over the three days I volunteered at the clinic, we literally saw over 1,000 people come and wait their turn in line to receive services.

Although my primary duty involved queuing people up to enter the hospital (an exercise in cat-herding, if you will), it really felt good to give back in that way.

One thing about the Nepalis is that they seem to live on very little income. Granted, things are much cheaper in Nepal and India than they are in the United States or other parts of the western world, but it seems like so little. And then there are the people who have no real income at all outside of begging.

You wish you could help them all, but it can be so overwhelming to see poverty in this context.

A Reminder of My Visit

Before saying goodbye to Lumbini and Nepal, I did a little shopping and got swept into the tent of a vendor who prides himself on his malas. He showed me his wares and I was drawn to a certain necklace made of real sandalwood. It has little Buddha heads at several locations and even a piece of real jade, which meets the requirements of the vedic astrological reading that Mandeep-Ji gave me that night at dinner in Rishikesh.

I made friends with the vendor, Narayan, and if anyone needs really high quality malas or bracelets straight from Nepal, I can say “I know a guy.”

There were lots of other cool things I would have liked to get, like a golden statue of that baby Buddha taking his first steps, but alas, my pack is already overloaded and I had spent every last red rupee I had in my purse by the time I crossed the border from Siddharthanagar into Sonauli.

Maybe when I make it back to teach yoga, I can pick up some more stuff.