Lumbini is the birthplace of the founder of one of the world's major religions and has been designated a world heritage site. Surprisingly, there were comparatively few tourists milling around, just a handful of western backpackers and some Buddhist pilgrims. The various Buddhist nations have each built a pagoda around a specially designated park, but the ancient remains themselves are low key, and perhaps the tranquil setting is the site's greatest draw. It's biggest downfall is the location in a mosquito infested marsh land. Mosquito's are EVERYWHERE!! Even though we employed enough DEET related mozzie replant products to take out half of the home counties I was bitten remorselessly.
From Lumbini we made our way west along a minor road, that turned into a track, that turned into a river. We crossed by leaking ferry. The routine appeared to be: dock, bail out, load, cross river, dock, bail out... etc.
Once back on the highway we had a 3 day ride to our next destination of Bardia national park. The roads proved to be amazingly quiet as we sailed along the flat stretches from village to village. We later found the reason for the quiet roads was heartbreaking. The roads were quiet because no buses were running, due to a dispute over an incident that had occurred the previous week. A little girl had crept under a bus while it was at a rest stop to play, the passengers had bordered the bus and the driver had driven off, in doing so he ran over the poor little girl, crushing her to death. A lynch mob formed and dragged the man from the driver's cab, tied him in a sack and threw him into the river. A few days later, his wife, overwhelmed with grief and having no way to support herself or family, committed suicide. The driver's dispute arose from the fact that although the bus company insurance company paid out 5000 pounds to the dead child's family, no compensation was payable to the widow of the bus driver. Terrible, terrible tragedy.
Accommodation was basic on the first night of the ride in the town of Lamahi, 70 miles out of Lumbini. Annoyingly, the teenage son of the owners had a copy of a Justin Beber (that how you spell it??) song, which he insisted on playing over and over while we had dinner. Not that worthy of note, you might say. Anyhow, later, in our 1st floor room, we were lying in bed, scantily clad owing to the heat, when from just outside the window emanated said same JB song. Dirty little peeping tom had climbed onto the a joining roof and was looking in from outside. To make it worse he came back in the middle of the night with a torch.
Faired better the following night, where we found Hotel Plaza in a town called Kohalpur. Which aside from being in the middle of a project to extend upwards by two storeys, was a very pleasant place to spend the night at just under 8 quid.
We turned off the main road for the last 12km to the lodge in Bardia National Park, forded a quite broad river and then bumped down a rutted track to the park HQ. We stayed at the Forest Hideaway lodge, in a mud hut with thatched rood. The lodge was arranged around a highly manacured central courtyard which contained a lovely english country garden. Very tranquil. On our day off we went for a elephant safari. Unfortunately, the grasses were very long at the end of the monsoon, so we didn't see any of the big game that we'd hoped (although not expected) to catch.
Moving on from Bardia to the border we had another 70 mile-ish ride to the crossroads of Atariya. Guest-house was dirty, but looked the best of an unappealing lot. The staff made up for it with their enthusiasm. As did the ever present mosquitos.
Final day to the border was a short 25 mile hop to the border town, Mahendranagar. We plucked the name of the best hotel in town from the Duff Guide and went to check in. Unfortunately, there seems to be a policy at Hotel Opera of telling westerners that they only have the rooms with air conditioning available, (some people at Bardia said this line had been trotted out to them). They are all but twice the price of the standard rooms. So, I went and waited outside and took a look at the book. 2 minutes later, they'd found actually, they did have a non AC room available. Amazing!! Anyhow, aside from that poor introduction, everything is clean, tidy, the restaurant tasty and very modestly priced. Ok, Den has found that custom made clothes can be made up quickly and cheaply so we're off dress shopping. Oh, happy days!!
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