Plans afoot to promote Buddhist Circuit jointly

Lumbini — the birth place of Lord Buddha — will be linked to the Buddhist Circuit to jointly promote tourism.

After the successful completion of the first Lumbini Peace Marathon, organiser of the marathon and owner of Buddhist CIRCUITS.com Bikram Pandey today discussed with Indian Railway Catering Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) representative Jitendra Kumar about jointly promoting Lumbini, in Bhairahawa.

They both concluded that the Buddhist Circuit has to be implemented as soon as possible, according to Pandey. "As soon as possible all international tourists travelling in the Maha Parinirvana Buddhist Circuit Tour from India will spend a minimum of one night in Lumbini as part of a standard Indian Government Tour Package," he said, adding that otherwise Buddhist tourists were only visiting Lumbini for a day, entering Nepal in the morning and visiting the Maya Devi garden for two hours, and returning to Gorakhpur the same evening under a standard Indian tour programme.

Kumar will immediately start pushing the process of bringing the Maha Parinirvana Train further to Noutan Hawa for the night halt.

Since Noutan Hawa is close to Nepal border, international Buddhist tourists will have the opportunity to spend two full days in Nepal and adjoining Buddhist sites of Lumbini, visiting and sightseeing, which will bring precious promotion of all Buddhist locations in Nepal between Lumbini, Tilaurkot and Ram Gram bringing tourism benefit to Lumbini and its surrounding area which was otherwise not happening, according to Pandey.