By Narada Dasa
Earlier this year we featured an article announcing that a 3-month long padayatra would take place in Russia to spread the holy names but we did it for almost four months instead.
On Friday, May 13th we set off for our padayatra in Russia, mostly travelling around in vehicles and doing harinama sankirtana as much as possible in the towns and villages we crossed. We also managed to hold an ‘ISKCON 50th anniversary’ commemorative bullock cart padayatra in the village of Ershov.
Our party traveled to the city of Rostov where we held our first harinama in a park. During the kirtana, a little girl around 4 years old was passing by with her mother. They stopped to watch the harinama and after a while the little girl, who was really enjoying the kirtana, began to dance with us. In fact he danced throughout the whole harinama. When it was over she became very sad and started to cry so sincerely that her mother asked us where the next harinama would be held. The next day mother and daughter met us at another park; both were very happy to see us and this time the mother also joined the dancing. Two days later I met them during a Sunday program with Prabhavishnu Dasa, and I asked them how they were doing. The mother said that every morning the first thing her daughter asks her is if they are going to the ‘Hare Krishnas’ that day. The girl just couldn’t wait to meet the devotees. Both mother and daughter appeared to be very happy during the program, and I recently heard that now they are attending a bhakti-vriksha group.
Some facts and figures about our Russian padayatra:
- Duration: 120 days
- Travelto 29 cities, covering a distance of 16 000 kms
- 3080 of Srila Prabhupada’s books and 350 ‘Golden Age’ magazines distributed
- 50 hours of temple kirtana
- 150 hours of harinam sankirtana
- 69 devotees (39 men and 30 women) participated in the padayatra
