Visit Budhanilkantha Temple - The House of the Sleeping Lord Vishnu

Budhanilkantha, portrays a sleeping Vishnu, floating like a gigantic astronaut on a bed of snakes in the middle of a big pool of water depicting the cosmic ocean. The name Budhanilkantha has nothing to do with Buddha, but literally means “blue throat disguised by mud”. The peculiar name refers to two legends attached to the statue, one of them saying that a farmer found the long lost statue in the mud when working his field with a plough and the other saying that Vishnu sacrificed himself by drinking the poison of the cosmic ocean, which then turned his throat blue.