By Manoj Barai
Having relished the Gaura-purnima celebrations at Kaundanyapur dhama, the following morning the All-India Padayatra departed for Dhamangaon, a small town in Maharashtra’s Amravati district. The padayatris had been invited by Dhamangaon centre leader Damodardulal dasa to grace their festival of Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s appearance being held on March 23.
ISKCON Dhamangaon is a well-attended, vibrant facility where all festivals are celebrated and weekly programmes are held on Saturdays. The town is 25km from Kaundanyapur, and as the party had only two days to walk that far it was going to be quite difficult to reach the destination in time. Nevertheless, if Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundara want to go then 25km would not be such a big deal, and in fact the padayatris arrived on the afternoon of the festival with enough time for a brief rest before the celebrations began.
The local devotees put on a grand welcome and arranged accommodation at Maheshwari bhavan, and that evening the padayatris marched to the festival venue. Joining the party there were several devotees from Amravati, including Amravati temple president Anantasesa dasa, as well as Kaundanyapur temple president Akrura dasa. The devotees enthusiastically joined in singing and dancing as the padayatris performed a powerful sankirtan and everyone did abhisheka of Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai. It was a wonderful scene to have abhisheka on one side of the venue and Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar’s rath parked on the other side with devotees having darshan of both. The oxen were the talk of the town and many people came specially to have their darshan on the auspicious occasion of Gaura-purnima.
In the morning all the devotees attended mangala arati and after breakfast prasadam the AIP left for Amravati.
