By Giriraj Govardhan dasa, Congregation preacher
For the pleasure of Srila Prabhupada and our spiritual master, Lokanath Maharaja, the devotees at Alibag, a resort town on Maharashtra’s Arabian Sea coast, held a one-day padayatra on April 3, 2022.
Padayatra began at 7am from our Hare Krishna Namahatta Kendra near the Sri Sri Laxmi-Narayan mandir with the blessings of our Guru Maharaja on his zoom japa session which he started three years ago for fallen souls like us. Our party consisted of twenty-five padayatris of all ages, including 4-year-old Bhakta Narottam and 70-year-old Parvati mataji, and Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai with a bullock cart.
Along the way the padayatris sang and danced as Bhavatarini mataji distributed prasad, covering almost all of Alibag as we headed to Thal village approximately 8km away. Our itinerary included visiting Alibag’s Vidhan Sabha constituency member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Shri Mahendra Sheth Dalvi, who performed arati of Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai along with his wife, Mrs Mansi Dalvi, the sarpanch of Thal gram panchayat. After honouring prasadam at the Dalvi’s property padayatra continued, our bullock cart being the talk of the town as people came out to take darshan of Sri Sri Gaura-Nita. Approaching our destination, we stopped briefly at Baagmala village’s Ram mandir then arrived at Thal at 10am where I gave a talk about padayatra’s history.
The walk ended with the padayatris honouring lunch prasadam at devotee Shadbhuj Gauranga dasa’s house. We then shared our realizations and took an oath to cover 222 villages attached to Alibag by padayatra. Our spiritual master says, “This is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s programme, going to villages and preaching.” Taking inspiration from him to continue with our padayatra project, we pray at the lotus feet of Gurudev and all Vaishnavas to shower their blessings so we can continue with padayatras.
I thank all the devotees who joined padayatra to make it a successful event. Hare Krishna.
