By Dayal Gopal dasa, Nepal sankirtan preacher
After a break of a few months to regroup and make minor personnel changes, by the mercy of Sri Guru and Gauranga and by the pure desire of pure devotees, on December 14, 2021, the auspicious day of Gita Jayanti, Nepal Padayatra continued to spread the message of the Bhagavad-gita throughout the hilly region of Nepal.
We are now just two devotees on Nepal Padayatra, Sudarshan dasa and myself. Sudarshan takes care of the oxen and drives the chariot expertly, but our first few days back on the road were quite difficult because we couldn’t handle the oxen who had been in one place for a while and needed retraining to deal with the rigours of walking every day.
We started book distribution from day one at the businesses we came to along the way. When looking at the chariot people remember Lord Krishna and Vrindavan dhama. We did not need to tell them where we came from. In fact, we met people from Dubai who knew of ISKCON! All glories to Srila Prabhupada. He has achieved the miracle of spreading ISKCON to all countries.
Some people have the wrong conception about Krishna, that He is a normal human being. However, in some areas in Nepal we encountered many people who consider Lord Rama and Lord Krishna as Bhagavan. We met several educated individuals, although ninety-nine per cent of people did not know about or couldn’t even pronounce Bhagavad-gita. In some villages people were good to us and in some they were not, but we experienced that wherever we walk with surrender and love for Krishna, our love for Krishna grows. We talk about Krishna and tell people about Krishna and in this way our sankirtan goes on in padayatra.
Nowadays the Bhagavad-gita is becoming popular in India as well as around the world. People are asking what is in the Bhagavad-gita and are doing research, but many are not getting Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita. They are being introduced to fake books, similar in name only, so people are getting trapped in this and only the fortunate get the real item.
Once we went to a school that was closed for a teachers-only day. I told one young teacher about the Bhagavad-gita and he was much enthused by it. Actually, he had been searching for Prabhupada’s translation for a long time. It often happens that people are waiting for the Bhagavad-gita and we just have to reach out to them, and anyone who is in a critical condition of life gets positively influenced by Prabhupada’s purports. All misconceptions fade away and they become Krishna conscious.
When padayatra stops lots of issues come up, such as the oxen becoming out of condition or even ill, but when we keep going on padayatra everything is fine, so we need to stay active. There are many internal and external things happening around us in padayatra and people are usually ready to help us. They bring grains, pulses or oil, but it’s actually Lord Krishna Himself managing our padayatra. People are also ready to listen to us.
At first, I didn’t know that we needed a tractor in padayatra or that we needed a vigraha, so we also learned many new things. At the start we went to a village and stayed at a temple and the next day did harinama sankirtan. People thought we had come for donations, but after the sankirtan they understood that we were distributing spiritual knowledge and many insisted that we come to their village. In this way our padayatra is going on by the mercy of our spiritual master, Lokanath Maharaja. He is our inspiration and our shelter.
All glories to Sri Guru and Gauranga.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
