Namobuddha

One of the giant Buddha statues--like 10 feet high!

My first weekend in Banepa was a good one. On the 17th Sam, Anna (our German friend from the HRDC), and I took a trip to a nearby monastery called Namobuddha (meaning Prostrated Buddha). We were up early in the morning and took a bus (after waiting an hour in the bus without departing the station, but meeting a nice German man named Raphael) along an extremely bumpy road--like throw you out of your bus seat bumpy; it was fun! (in a way…) I also got my first glimpse of the Himalayas, much higher (above the clouds) and bigger than I thought they would look from here. We arrived nearly three hours after we first got on the bus, and after a short hike we were greeted by a gorgeous, new, red and gold painted monastery. The feel of the place was absolutely peaceful; Anna and I mused that it would be difficult not to have a Buddhist outlook in a place as lovely as Namobuddha. We were invited in to have lunch with the monks, yummy daal bhaat and my first taste of (disgusting) Tibetan butter tea, in a hall lined with literally thousands of eight-inch gold Buddhas in glass cases. It was crazy to see. At 1 p.m. we were invited to puja (I would translate this as “worship”), where the monks chanted, banged drums, and blew Narnia-style trumpets for an hour while we meditated. We also visited a smaller temple with a bigger Buddha--ten feet tall on a fifteen foot pedestal, surrounded by elaborate wood carvings and bright paintings. Last we visited the stupas--one on top of the hill marks the place where Buddha (in his second-to-last life) fed himself to a starving tigress so that she could feed her cubs; the second is said to hold some of Buddha’s bones. The bus ride back was empty by Nepali standards (about half full) and so the ride was even bumpier without people squeezed next to you like sardines in a can to hold you in place--I’m not kidding when I say it’s fun, it really does make one laugh quite a bit if you have the right attitude!

A pretty view of the monastery and the sky.

The shrine showing where Buddha fed himself to the tigress.

The second stupa with lotsa prayer flags.