Disaster... Averted

May 9

This morning we met by 9am to head to Lumbini. Before that, we got up for breakfast at the hotel. The only option was a buffet. It wasn't terrible. There were crepe style pancakes with honey and some potatoes and toast. Nothing too great. That was about 300 Nepali rupees. There are approximately 84 Nepali rupees to the dollar. It's cheaper than in India!
The bus ride to Lumbini was about half an hour or so. Again, no AC... Lots of sweat... The usual ha.
When we got there, Z gave us a briefing on the city. Again, it was a lot of information but this is as much as I can remember. Lumbini is the town where Buddah was born. He was the son of the king and the king did not want him to know about pain and suffering so he did not have to bear that burden (my phone wanted to correct this to but dent ha) and therefore, Buddah was kept within the walls of the kingdom. Finally, when he was 29 years old, he wanted to go out. He took his childhood friend/servant with him. He saw old people and he was wondering why they were suffering because he had never known what getting old was. He saw sick people and wondered what that was. He also wondered about poor people. His friend had to explain everything to him. Buddah was confused as to why he lived in the kingdom and had such a lavish life when a lot of the people in his kingdom were suffering. He decided to leave his kingdom behind and he went out on his own. He met an aesthetic (like the man we saw and took pictures of) and the aesthetic explained to Buddah that he has given himself to god and that he has given up everything. Buddah found this interesting and possibly rewarding and he began to follow this. He decided to go out into the woods or jungle or something and self reflect. He had 5 disciples who followed him and they wanted him to teach him how he lived. They were with him for the 6 years and none of them ate a single meal. They finally wandered back and they were skin and bones. A woman fed Buddah food. His disciples were very angry with him because they saw Buddah eat this meal and they felt betrayed so they left him and went to Saranath. Buddah sat down by the lake and began to reflect. While he was there he saw someone playing something like a sitar and he realized that life should be balanced. This is when he decided that there was no reason to suffer. Hinduism is built around the cast system and you are reincarnated and don't necessarily go to nirvana right away. He wanted to find a way to end the pain and suffering and go directly to nirvana. Once he realized there needed to be a balance of good and suffering he went to saranath to try to find his disciples because he thought they would be the only ones who understood. And that is where he gave his first sermon as i already discussed when i talked about being there. That's the best I can do haha.
We took rickshaws, the bike with a little carriage on the back, around the park. I feel terrible taking those things. You pay the guys so little and they are lugging you all over. I don't like it.
Inside the park, there is a main temple and then about 20 different countries have built monasteries there as well. We got to see a few of them such as Singapore, France, Nepal, Korea, and some country I had no idea what it even was. We also got to go inside Germany and chinas. It was crazy beautiful. There were so many colors all over and huge statues. It was like being in a child's world. Germany's had a garden sound the outside that told the life of Buddah. Our rickshaw driver was very adamant about showing us everything. We had to tell him we didn't have enough time and that we wanted to go see the main temple. He always asked if we wanted a picture with everything too. It was cute.
Once we got to the main temple, we paid an entrance fee and waked through some ruins of the first temple and came out into a garden. It was covered in the Tibetan flags and there were Buddhist monks scattered throughout the garden.
It was so cool! And of course, at that moment when I was like o man I can take a million awesome photos here! My camera died. And I was like no big! I got my back up battery! But I didn't have it charged because the day I switched them we were on the sleeper train so I couldn't charge it. I was so annoyed at myself! It was awesome. I even had a Buddhist monk do a little prayer thing for me. I think it was food good luck and good karma but I'm not sure. He said a prayer while he tied a string around my wrist that looks like a bracelet and then held some beaded necklaces up to my head. It was cool. We were really rushed though. You can spend 7 or 8 hours there and we only had 2. Oh well though. That's what happens when you want to see as much as you can I guess!
After we went around the park we met back at the front of the park. I looked down at my leg and literally had maybe 30 re dots on the lateral side of my right leg. It was the strangest thing. It didn't even look like mosquito bites and it didn't itch. A few other people had them too but not as many. We think there may have been something on the couch we had sat on at the hotel in the morning.
We had an hour to eat lunch and then we loaded onto the bus to head to Chitwan. We had to take a public bus. Luckily, we each got our own seat and we didn't have to shove a million people into 1 spot. It was still a rather unenjoyable and uncomfortable ride. It was so ridiculously hot. I wanted to work on blogging but I couldn't even keep my eyes open because it was so hot my body just wanted to sleep. Not even wanted to. I couldn't control it. It was like I shut down and had no choice to do anything else. I even tried to stay awake and see as much as I could. The few times I opened my eyes it was beautiful. It's so green in Nepal!
It actually started raining while we were driving and it felt AMAZING!!! I never knew how much I could enjoy being soaked to the core with rain. We all had the windows up and everything. They stopped and pulled our bags down from the top into the bus... At least the ones that weren't covered by the tarp which was maybe 6 of them. They put them in the middle of the aisles as well which ended up being pretty funny when locals had to get off the bus. It was like climbing an avalanche of hiking bags.
When we got to Chitwan, we got off the bus and they herded us into an area to assign rooms and give us the information about our optional activities while in Chitwan.
After we got our room keys, we all headed upstairs to grab our bags. I saw the pile of bags and started digging around for mine. It wasn't there. Curtis didn't have his either. We were trying to look around and see if they had put them on a different floor but we couldn't find them anywhere. We told one of the workers at the hotel. They began looking everywhere for the bags. They were nowhere to be found.
Some people thought maybe the bags ha gone in the trunk of the bus and that maybe they had just forgotten to unload it. I was convinced my bag was gone an I was going to have to fly home. Curtis didn't think we would get our bags back either. He was so angry because all their malaria meds and his spices (he really loves cooking an masala is his secret spice ingredient) were in his bag. And of course clothes and things like that.
It was a stressful 2 hours. I had been talking to whit earlier about disasters and how it had been pretty smooth so far and all the disasters i had were manageable (girl stuff and diarrhea). I was like okay now we have a disaster. They were calling the owner of the bus but his cell phone was off so they were trying to find his home number so they could see if the bags were still in the bus. Z called the hotel to make sure they had gotten on the bus. We had to eat dinner but I wasn't very hungry. I knew I needed to eat though so I ordered a grilled cheese toast (they have real cheese here!) which was amazingly tasty. After some more talking and worrying and wondering about the bags, they got a hold of the owner and the bags were in the trunk.
At this point Curtis and I were just happy to have news of our bags. But then we were being told the owner lives 20km away and that we wouldn't get our bags until 9am the next morning. We preferred to have them that evening, especially because we needed specific clothing which we didn't have for the canoe ride and jungle walk at 7am the next morning.
No one was taking responsibility for the bags. We didn't think it was our fault because Z always wants us to just leave our bags and have the guys take care of them and whisks us away somewhere. They didn't think it was their fault because they didn't know that the bags had been in the trunk so they didn't think to check their. The owner didn't think it was his fault. But we didn't think we should have to pay for a taxi to get our bags back (about 2000 rupees) so I think Z ended up paying for it in the end. I don't like that and he wouldn't confirm he did or did not but it sucks to know that he is using his own money to sole those types of issues. He does it when we are short money on bills too at restaurants. It's very nice of him but its something we should take care of, not him.
I think we ended up finding out about our bags around 10pm and getting them around 11pm. I then stayed up to chat for a while with some people from the group. Z wanted me to drink but I didn't feel like it. When you sweat so much all day a beer is really the last thing you want... At least that is how I feel!
What a day! Oy vey. Thank god that disaster was averted! I will keep an eye on my bag through traveling all the time now even if they tell me to come listen to the group stuff! Terrible scare ha!