Hello!
After finishing the Annapurna Base Camp trek and taking a couple of days off in Pokhara, we travelled to the town of Lumbini, where Buddha was born.
The oldest signs of human activity at the supposed birthplace go all the way back to 1000 BC. According to Robin Coningham, who excavated the site, the site might be a Buddhist monument from as early as 600 BC.
There is a huge complex containing those ruins, the lake where Buddha was supposed to have his first bath, and is intended as a monastic site, where only temples can be built.
Some of those temples - financed by Buddhist organisations from several countries - offer accommodation and food and are even donation based. We decided to stay at a Korean monastery for a couple of days.
The living conditions there were very basic, those monks that run the place are very modest people. Instead of a mattress, you sleep on a wooden board with a thin foam mat, you take bucket showers, and the food is pretty much the same for every meal. But, on the other hand, it feels amazing to be there since everyone is very relaxed and the whole place is very serene and quiet, we took some tome for reading and thinking :)
After 3 days we moved back to Kathmandu, we are all leaving Nepal in the next 5 days, and I believe this is going to be the last part of my blog for now.
I had an amazing journey, met incredible people along the way, and I can't wait to go backpacking again :)
To everyone who were regular readers of my blog, thanks for your support, it gave me the boost I needed to write it.
Here are the pics from Lumbini, I hope you enjoy them:
