Lumbini: Buddhas, Birds and Beasts
This article is shared from Features section of ECS Nepal.
By: Daniel B Haber
The woman at the tour desk of the Kathmandu Guest House handed me my tickets to Lumbini on Buddha Air “how appropriate”, I thought. I flew out late Saturday night on the last Buddha Air flight from Kathmandu to Bhairahawa’s Gautam Buddha Airport.
It was pitch-dark on the lampless highway to the birthplace of the Light of Asia. Six or seven centuries before the Christian era—and some 2,000 years before the Disney-era—Lumbini, located on an important trade route between Kashi (Varanasi) and Taxila, was famed for its celestial pleasure groves. It was here that Queen Maya Devi, wife of King Sudodhana, chose to give birth to her baby son, a prince named Siddhartha who later became known as “The Buddha” or the Enlightened One.
Coming from polluted Kathmandu, the pristine atmosphere of Lumbini in the rural Terai is palpable. There are still shady groves and heavenly breezes even in the hot months such as April and May when Buddha Jayanti usually falls.
