When I got Buddha's blessings

I looked at the Buddha bust at home and said: "I am going to your country." It was meant to be an office trip to Nepal. My first to that beautiful country on the foothills of the Himalayas.

We had no plans of going to Lumbini. The Buddha was born as prince of the Shakya clan in sixth century BC in the mystical gardens of Lumbini, on India-Nepal border. Our prime ports of call were Kathmandu and Pokhara, quite far from Lumbini.

But with roads still in a mess in the wake of the Nepal earthquake, our travel plans came unstuck, forcing us to take roundabout routes. And, suddenly, we realised, we were on the road to Lumbini: glorious spires and bell-shaped stupas rising above the skyline of sleepy little villages, beckoned us…

There's magic in the air. In the solitude and silence, the massive ancient trees casting green shadow, the creepers and dark moss underfoot, the heavy scent of flowers growing wild. Remnants of the 5,000-year-old Sacred Garden of great sal trees, Lumbinivana, where Queen Mayadevi had given birth to Siddhartha on her way to her father's palace, after taking bath in a pond (which still exists) and holding on to the branches of a sal tree during labour. In 2013, British archaeologist Robin Coningham found its traces through radio-carbon dating.

Beyond a golden statue of the infant Buddha you reach a foot bridge, curving over a canal. A brilliant white stupa structure glimmers at the end of the long walkway: Mayadevi temple, the exact spot where the Shakyamuni was born.

Turn to your right: hundreds and thousands of dark pink lotus blossoms sway gently. Look to your left: white lotuses crowd your vision. The sign of the Buddha - pink representing the "awakened one" and white for purity. "Just like a lotus - born in the water, grown in the water, rising up above the water - stands unsmeared by the water, in the same way I - born in the world, grown in the world, having overcome the world - live unsmeared by the world. Remember me as the awakened."

The sun shines bright. Yet a cool breeze blows. Is it my imagination, but why do I feel a sweet, cool touch on my head? Not chilly, not frosty, not scary. But very, very real: as if a hand made of wind - the wind that comes right behind the rain - moves invisibly: from my head, down my shoulders, to the small of my back and slowly melts away. Startled, I look around. There's no one but me. I wait for my colleagues to catch up with me on the bridge: "Did you feel that?" They ask: "What? What are you talking about?"

The image of the golden life-sized Sukhothai wooden hand of the Buddha I had bought from Bangkok years ago - and the meaning of which I could never quite pin down - suddenly comes to mind. On this sun-dazzled morning, I understand the meaning of that raised palm with loosely splayed fingers.

There is a word that Buddhists know, atakkavachara, or the unfathomable that is beyond the reach of thought, understanding, conception or reason. As I stand in the darkness of the Mayadevi temple, the wind becomes an invisible force. Time loses its meaning. And silence becomes a tangible reality. Peace descends. An unfathomable touch plays out on my mind in slow motion: real yet inexplicable, precise yet unjustifiable, distinct yet incomprehensible.

At the centre of the temple, a little below ground level rests a "marker stone," with hazy markings on it. According to Buddhist records, this is where the prince had first landed. In the third century BC, when Mauryan Emperor Asoka visited Lumbini as a pilgrim, he had built an enclosure of bricks and a pillar with inscriptions, which exist even now. He had also enclosed the Buddha's foot marks with lapis lazuli - which does not.

Buddhist tradition also records that Queen Mayadevi had the premonition of a great birth in a dream, one full-moon night: that she was carried away by four heavenly spirits to the Manasarovar, bathed and bedecked in flowers, before a white elephant, holding a white lotus in its trunk, came up to her, went around three times and entered her womb. When the Bodhisattva was born, he had apparently taken seven steps without being supported, with lotus flowers springing up where he set his feet.

On the uppermost portion of the Ashokan Pillar you can still see an inscription, by the last visitor to make a pilgrimage to Lumbini before it was overtaken by the wild and forgotten for the next five centuries. The prayer of Nepal prince Ripu Malla reads:

"Om Mani Padme Hum."