Kushinagar
I know many of you have anxiously been awaiting a new post about my trip, well here it is only like a week late 
After leaving Varanasi we decided to head for Kushinagar which is the place where Buddha died.
The trip to get here meant taking a train from Varanasi to Gorakhpur and then a bus onto Kushinagar. Gorakhpur is typically just a stopping off point for those people who are planning on heading onto Nepal.
Speaking of Nepal, we were actually going to try and go up to Kathmandu for a week or so. The only problem was that I only have a single entry visa into India and so if we left we would have to get another Indian visa for myself that could take up to 2 weeks. In the end it wasnt worth the possibility of not having enough time in India so it is going on the list of future places to visit.
We attempted to take a bus to Kushinagar but the buses were really crowded and it just didnt seem like a fun arrangement for 2 hours. That lead us to take a taxi, which although more expensive was worth the money.
Kushinagar is typically not a touristy place which could explain the fact that there are only 3 hotels, 2 of which were not currently open, and only one restaurant that was extremely slow.
We decided to stay in a Vietnamese Buddhist Monastery. The rooms were really basic but it was definetly a interesting experience. As I have mentioned before India has some energy issues and we lost power just as it was getting dark. Thankfully a couple hours earlier we had purchased a flash light so we atleast had a little light since who really goes to bed at 6:30pm. The only downside of losing power is that the fan no longer works. Needless to say I was a bit hot through out the night. Although I dont think I complained much about it
Originally we had planned to spend 2 nights there but decided to head back early and just spend the night in Gorakhpur before taking the train to Agra.
Filed under: Uncategorized on September 11th, 2008
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