By Damodharlila Dasa (Maharashtra Padayatra leader)
The Maharashtra Padayatra was inaugurated at Pandharpur dham on Ashadi Ekadashi in July 2019 by the auspicious hands of our spiritual master, Lokanath Maharaja. In the five years since then padayatra has covered western Maharashtra and half of the Vidarbha region.
It has been a wonderful experience preaching in Maharashtra, the land of saints, or as they say in Marathi santanchi bhumi.Wherever we went we were welcomed and helped, and although some issues were faced during Covid all the rest was fine.Every day we walk for about 10km and perform evening nagar sankirtan. We enter a village singing and dancing, book distribution goes on and we invite the villagers for mangal arati and give them chanting beads. They also take sankalpa to chant daily.
This year is very special for us disciples of Lokanath Maharaja.We recently celebrated Gurudev’s seventy-fifth vyasa-puja in Vrindavan dham and on this Ashadi our MaharashtraPadayatra turned five years of age. On the auspicious occasion new deities of Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar for our padayatra sponsored by Shantiparayan Dasa, a senior All India Padayatri were installed on the chariot. Abhishek of Their Lordships was performed by Maharaja and other senior devotees.
The previous deities we were worshipping were deities of dindi. Every year Maharashtra’s main three dindis move from Dehu, Alandi and Saswad towards Pandharpur, so every year we needed to go back to Pune before the start of dindi. Then the padayatra chariot would go on dindi to Pandharpur dham. Now we can do rounds of Maharashtra like our All India Padayatra, which has already completed six rounds of the whole of India and is now on the seventh.
All India Padayatra’s first leader Jaya Vijaya Dasa personally attended our anniversary as he had come for Maharaja’s vyasa-puja. It was a great fortune to have his association.The first arati after the installation was performed by Jaya Vijaya, the most senior padayatri. Srila Prabhupada disciple Akildhara also joined the programme and blessed us for our further preaching journey. At present we are only four padayatris. We request devotees to join padayatra and enjoy the bliss of preaching in nagar nagar grama grama.
Five-year padayatra report: Maharashtra Padayatra has walked 12,000 km, covering the districts of Beed, Nagar, Solapur, Osmanabad, Latur, Nanded, Parbhani, Amravati, Akola, and Jalgaon.
Padayatra has stayed in around 1400villages, visited and crossed 2300 villages, done 235 school programmes, organized about 500 house programmes, and distributed more than 12,000 full-plate and 50,000 drona prasad. Sankirtan, book distribution and an evening programme were done in each village where padayatra halted.
Five-year book score: Small 32,680, medium 75, big 1367, maha big 15,409. Total books distributed by Maharashtra Padayatra 49,531.
Currently we are at ISKCON Amravati and will be here for one month covering the city and some rural talukas of Amravati district.
Please bless us that we can go on and on in our preaching journey. Padayatra is a big austerity; may the Lord give us all strength to tolerate all pains and serve the lotusfeet of Guru and Gauranga.
Sri Sri Nitai Gaurasundar ki jai
Maharastra padayatra ki jai
Srila Prabhupada ki jai
