August 1st : From July 14th onwards we participated for 15 days in the famous Pushkaralu festival at the holy place of Basara on the banks of the Godavari river. This Pushkaralu is a kind of kumbha- mela, with nearly one million people taking bath daily in the Godavari and visiting the famous temple of goddess Jnana Sarasvati (the provider of knowledge), the most prominent Sarasvati temple in India.
Every morning and evening we went on harinama with our bullock cart through the streets of the town. People respectfully offered obeisances to Sri Sri Gaura Nitai. We can estimate that daily 20,000 to 50,000 had darsana of the padayatra deities.
We are only four padayatris in our regular party, but happily six devotees came from Hyderabad to join our book distribution efforts. We distributed a total of 1,100 big books (500 Bhagavad-gita, 300 Ramayana and 300 Srimad-Bhagavatam), 300 medium and 2,000 small books, along with 50,000 maha-mantra cards.
We are now walking in the district of Telangana and are still inviting devotees to join our padayatra party.
PS : We are sad to report the death of Bhima, one of our two oxen. Last June, while he was feeding on grass on the side of the highway, he got hit by a Sumo vehicle and died on the spot. We did a ceremony to honor our four-legged padayatri and then buried him. We purchased another ox in the local market, whom we named Caitanya. Even though he’s not exactly matching Krishna, the other ox, in size and strength, the problem is that they two oxen do not get along well : Caitanya is fearing and kicking Krishna !
