Russian devotees join the walk for a few weeks
At the end of January we were joined by two Russian devotees albeit only for a few days, Kavicandra Dasa, 45 years old, and Jai Tirtha Dasa, 30 years old. We had met them in Jagannath Puri at my Guru Maharaja’s Vyasa-puja. While they were on padayatra they performed melodious kirtana in the evening procession and also engaged in book distribution. It was wonderful to be accompanied by these nice devotees, however communication was sometimes a problem, since their English was limited. Nevertheless, by Krsna’s mercy, we managed to understand each other and had a good time travelling together. On February 13th, our Andhra Pradesh Padayatra party found itself in the village of Bayyaram in the Khammam district. This district is located in the northern part of the state, about 185 kilometers from Hyderabad. Our Russian companions bid us farewell on the 20th of February and were off to Sri Mayapur Dhama. Once again we were only three on the party, Srinivas Sevananda Das, Kumar (a young devotee about 21 years old) and myself. Despite this we will continue to forge ahead on this padayatra mission.
New cart for the kitchen
I am happy to report that we have recently constructed a new cart to be used as a kitchen. The kitchen is about 6 x 11 feet in size and is made entirely of galvanized metal sheeting, which will ensure its long duration. To build the cart we employed a welder named Narayana from Hyderabad. The new cart is pulled by two bullocks and looks very much like a regular kitchen on the inside, with a counter, sinks, shelves and storage space. The cost was approximately 130 000 Rs. Our Padayatra party contributed 40 000 Rs, Raghava Goswami Dasa donated 10 000 Rs, and my wife and son loaned 40 000 Rs each. Unfortunately we were only able to use the kitchen for 25 days, as we are currently unable to maintain four bulls and two carts due to a shortage of manpower. So we have temporarily left the bullocks and the kitchen cart in Danthalapally, the place where I grew up, until our numbers increase.
Very good responses from the villagers
We reached the town of Khammam on the 2nd of March. There we experienced problems with traffic, lack of grass for the animals, not to mention an abundance of mosquitoes. In one month we covered Mahabubabad, Bayyaram, Garla and Dornakal Mandals, and different villages, where we received very good responses from the people and different villages we visited. We noticed that people really appreciated this kind of village-to-village preaching, despite it being strange to them at first. When they saw the beautiful Deities and the carts drawn by the oxen, they expressed great joy. It was touching to see people spontaneously join the procession and to watch the rise in book distribution. It was also much better travelling through the villages and being at the Mandal headquarter than being at the District headquarter in Khammam.
Wonderful festivities for Gaura-Purnima
On the 19th of March our Padayatra party celebrated the most auspicious day of Gaura- Purnima in the town of Khammam. It was a big and joyous celebration which included nagarsankirtana, abhisheka, chappan bhoga, krsna-katha and other wonderful festivities. An outstanding 150 people attended the festivities. We also distributed prasadamof yellow rice and pongal to more than 500 people, which included those who attended the program. All this could not have been done without the mercy of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and the valiant efforts of so many devotees, including my family and the local devotees. I was elated to see how everything had come together so nicely, the villagers even helped with the preparation of the prasada. We stayed in the town of Khammam for 40 days after the Gaura Purnima festival. Every day we walked to different locations in the town and had great success with book distribution. On the 12th of April we headed towards Danthalapally in the Warangal district which is about 60 kilometers from Khammam.
Heading towards Hyderabad
Two days later our Padayatra party travelled to Thirumalayapalem Village, a village located 15 kilometers from Khammam. It was there that we came across the Kusuma Harinada temple. This temple has three altars: in the central one is Kusuma Harinada with His wife, on the left one is Radha Madhava and on the right one Gaura Nitai. This 64 years old temple temple was built by one of the villagers who has since passed on. We reached Dathalapally on the 25th of April and are now steadily moving in the direction of Hyderabad, which we plan to reach by June 25th in order to attend the Ratha-yatra of Lord Jagannatha on the 29th. . We decided to leave the carts in Dathalapally till the 14th of May because we intend to take a little trip soon Haridwar, Rishikesh and Badrinath. Last, but not least, are our latest book scores: 310 big books and 2000 small books in March and 335 big books and 2200 small books in April.