23rd June 2013
Although not quite sure of the route to Ramkot, we walked
from Swoyambhu at about 11 am towards the White Monastery, also known as Druk
Amitabh Mountain. We carried a bottle of water, lunchbox and some fruits. It
was a cool day. Asking people ahead of us on the way about the way to Gumba,
who seemed to be going to the same destination as ours, we kept following them.
After walking for about 10 minutes, we took a shortcut through the steps. We
were a bit sad not to find any signposts to make our travel easier. The shortcut
was not a proper way. It was rather an open barren field of someone and the way
through it was quite narrow. From there, we could see a steep hill ahead of us through
which people were moving upwards. Soon we realized that the Seto Gumba
experience was going to be adventurous. We reached to the motorway area and
continued walking across the road. We could see many people preceding and
following us. It seemed like a fair. We wondered what made Seto Gumba so
popular and special. It must have been about 45 minutes with our slow gait when
we reached the bottom of the steep hill. Scary it looked. We were to choose
between scary shortcut and long safe way. We chose the former one.
The steep hill was without any way. We were to make our own.
Taking hold of some grass, we would climb up. The water bottle and lunchbox bag
seemed a burden during climbing. We reached a bit up and felt dizzy. However,
we did not lose hope and continued upwards clicking ourselves. We again met the
motorway in about 15-20 minutes and felt satisfied on our accomplished
adventure. By that time, we were soaked in sweat.
Continuing our walk for about 10-15 minutes, we finally
reached the Druk Amitabh Mountain. It looked huge and covered a wide area.
There were hundreds of motorbikes but a few number of other vehicles and
uncountable number of people. Family,
couple, friends, children, school children were the visitors. After receiving
visitor passes, we walked through the area.
Gardens were in most of the places. There were large
Buddhist arts on the walls resembling Thanka paintings. There was a big statue
of Buddha on the first part of garden. Steps on both sides of the statue led to
the next Buddha statue which was again in between steps. Those steps led to the
last statue of Buddha which was the largest and well decorated. This was a huge
open area. Everyone seemed excited to click themselves in front of the well
maintained, neat and tidy gardens and big statues.
Most of the places notified “No entry” and they looked very
neat and tidy. The entire floor was smoothened with marble and pitch. There was
a Cafe Naro reminding me of Cafe Nero of the UK. We could see Buddhist Ani (nun)
handling the cafe. There were two places of shelter which was all occupied. By
this time, the weather was typical of a June day. People rested and enjoyed a
glimpse of green dense forests on the hills. We enjoyed our lunch by the side
of shelter. Just close to it was a garden with replica of bridge, river and
birds. After taking snaps, we moved down and followed a queue. It was the only permitted
area of the Gumba besides the gardens. A temple was situated on the first
floor. We took off our shoes in a shoe rack and went to the temple upstairs.
The temple was massively decorated. We could see a huge
statue of Buddha facing the door and the walls were all filled with small
statues of Buddha. There were hundreds of Buddha statues in those walls, preserved
inside the glasses. We saw an individual standing and delivering a speech to
about 20-25 audience listening to him. They were in ordinary dress. 4-5 Anis
were guarding the room as it was meant to be quiet. We exited the temple. Our
barefoot on the cool, smooth marble felt heaven in the midday heat. From the
temple, we could see a nice view of Kathmandu along with green dense forests by
its side which looked magnificent. The ground floor had a gift shop managed by Anis.
This reminded me of the UK gift shop in different travel destinations.
The crowd seemed to expand more and more. We decided to return.
Gave back our visitor passes, bought cold fruit juices and a bottle of water
and left the place. Enjoying the drinks, we travelled through the long motorway
this time. We saw many people going towards the Monastery on our way back. It
was indeed a popular place and worth a day out.
No comments:
Post a Comment