Last summer we walked for a couple of months in the South Russian district, starting from Essentuki, and proceeded towards Suhumi. We did harinama in all the cities and villages we went through with our Deities called Doyal Nitai Vijay Gauranga. Our padayatra party varied from 22 to 35 devotees, 5 to 20 locals. and other devotees from Belarus and Ukraine. The party was composed of one brahmacari (myself), three children, four teenagers, two vanaprasthas and the majority were grihasthas. Our procession was done Indradyumni Swami’s style, one loudspeaker and two lines of devotees chanting and dancing, with beautifully dressed matajis gracefully dancing in front. I conducted a two-week Harinama Sankirtana course during our walk. It gave a history of the Sankirtana movement from Lord Caitanya’s times to today, some knowledge and practice of
Vaishnava musical instruments (mridanga, karatalas and harmonium) and the basics of singing and dancing.
Rasika Dasi : The people we meet are receptive to our harinama, they dance, accept our prasadam 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’s books.
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 harinama at 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 harinama and 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.
We distributed a total of 8000 BBT books and 2000 prasadam 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 , the harinama in Sochi, place of the 2014 Olympic Games, the visit to the Black Sea, the participation of Danishtha Dasi and Sri Radha Dasi, the two sankirtana leaders from Kazakhstan, and the presence during the entire walk of two teen -agers, Madhavi and Narayani. Let’s not forget Maha Shakti Prabhu, who kept everybody on padayatra in a jolly mood with his good jokes.
Padayatris : Not for the newsletter
- Vijay Gopal Dasa (leader, manager, driver, mridanga player, book distributor )
- Bala Gopal Dasa (Singer, mridanga player)
- Maha Shakti Dasa (Driver, pujari, mridanga player, jokster)
- Evyavan Dasa (Driver, singer, mridanga player)
- Yashoda Dulal Dasa (Driver, karatalas player, car repairs)
- Adosh-darshi Dasa (book distributor)
- Narada Dasa (Mridanga player, organiser and teacher of the Sankirtana course)
- Trishakti Dasi (dancer)
- Anuragavati Dasi (dancer, book distributor, cook)
- Rasika Dasi (dancer, book distributor)
- Vraja-lila Dasi (dancer, cook)
- Padmalaya Dasi (dancer, book distributor)
- Bhaktin Svetlana (dancer, book distributor, accountant)
- Bhaktin Narayani (dancer)
- Bhaktin Zhenya (dancer)
- Bhaktin Elena (dancer, book distributor)
- Bhaktin Marina (dancer, book distributor, cook)
- Bhaktin Aditi (dancer, book distributor, cook)
- BhaktaSasha (dancer, book distributor )
- BhaktaMadhava(dancer, book distributor )
- Bhakta Sergey(dancer, book distributor)
- Bhakta Marat (dancer, book distributor)