{"id":1689,"date":"2015-01-20T23:37:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T18:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.padayatra.com\/?p=1689"},"modified":"2015-01-22T23:39:59","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T18:09:59","slug":"one-month-padayatra-in-south-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.padayatra.com\/padayatra-new\/one-month-padayatra-in-south-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"One month Padayatra in South Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last summer we walked for a couple of months in the South Russian district, starting from Essentuki, and proceeded towards Suhumi. We did\u00a0harinama<\/em>\u00a0in all the cities and villages we went through with our Deities called Doyal Nitai Vijay Gauranga. Our\u00a0padayatra<\/em>\u00a0party varied from 22 to 35 devotees, 5 to 20 locals. and other devotees from Belarus and Ukraine. The party was composed of one\u00a0brahmacari\u00a0<\/em>(myself), three children, four teenagers, two\u00a0vanaprasthas<\/em>\u00a0and the majority were\u00a0grihasthas<\/em>. Our procession was done Indradyumni Swami\u2019s style, one loudspeaker and two lines of devotees chanting and dancing, with beautifully dressed matajis gracefully dancing in front. I conducted a two-week\u00a0Harinama Sankirtana\u00a0<\/em>course during our walk. It gave a history of the Sankirtana movement from Lord Caitanya\u2019s times to today, some knowledge and practice of<\/p>\n

Vaishnava musical instruments (mridanga, karatalas<\/em>\u00a0and harmonium) and the basics of singing and dancing.<\/p>\n

Rasika Dasi\u00a0: The people we meet are receptive to our\u00a0harinama<\/em>, they dance, accept our\u00a0prasadam\u00a0<\/em>sweets and buy the books. Sometimes the police arrests us and takes us to the Police Station, but even there we continue chanting and distributing Srila Prabhupada\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

In Russia almost everyone is an atheist or a radical Christian and those people often complain about the presence of the Hare Krishna devotees. Even though the government does not allow us to do\u00a0harinama<\/em>\u00a0at any time or any place, we still manage to do it, trying to organize it in a nice way so that nobody complains. But sometimes the police stops our\u00a0harinama<\/em>\u00a0and takes the entire group of devotees to the police station to check their papers, which usually takes from one to six hours. But we still sold books there.<\/p>\n

We distributed a total of 8000 BBT books and 2000\u00a0prasadam\u00a0<\/em>sweetballs. The highlights of our padayatra were the visit of the Vaishnava rural community of New Varshana Dhama (fifteen devotees and two cows) 20 km from Nosorossiysk\u00a0, the\u00a0harinama<\/em>\u00a0in Sochi, place of the 2014 Olympic Games, the visit to the Black Sea, the participation of Danishtha Dasi and Sri Radha Dasi, the two\u00a0sankirtana<\/em>\u00a0leaders from Kazakhstan, and the presence during the entire walk of two teen -agers, Madhavi and Narayani. Let\u2019s not forget Maha Shakti Prabhu, who kept everybody on\u00a0padayatra<\/em>\u00a0in a jolly mood with his good jokes.<\/p>\n

Padayatris\u00a0: Not for the newsletter<\/strong><\/p>\n