Padayatra Iceland was a joint event largely made possible by the efforts of Bhakta Pavel, who last year had gone to the main town of Reykjavik on a book distribution mission. Happy with the success of his mission, he planned another visit for the summer of 2016 both to the city and to a remote tourist area of northern Iceland called Akureyri. While in Mayapur during the padayatra ministry seminars for the ILS event, I thought about how to expand, to do more padayatras to reach the goal of ...

Ramadewa is a rural village where the most of the residents are Hindus from Bali. Actually there was no devotee in this village. So how could Lord Jagannath reach this rural village? On one of the ratha yatra in Lampung a year ago, a parliament member of Lampung, Mr. I Komang Koheri, SH, from Ramadewa was invited to participate in the festival. He fell in love with the festival. He approached the devotees in Lampung to also organize a ratha yatra in his village. The devotees were surprised to...

The world holy name week (WHNW-16) was celebrated globally from 28th Jul – 14th Aug 2016. Devotees in Singapore at the Gauranga Centre, played their part of spreading the glories of holy name by doing harinaam sankirtan. Indeed, the holy name week had a rousing start as devotees were led by a senior kirtaniya to an ecstatic round of kirtan. In Singapore owing to a hectic work schedule, devotees decided to dedicate their evenings after work to engage in the service of the holy name sankir...

“I went through a lot of pain, physical,” Swami admitted. “The biggest challenge of all is walking on an angle – it’s like walking on a beach. But nevertheless, everything else compensated for that (pain), including meeting fantastic people, meeting characters, being confronted by black bears, grizzlies, whatnot, and finally I became an addict, I like it, gotta do it again.” His first coast-to-coast walk was documented in “The Longest Road,” a 2003 National Film Board of Canada movi...

Sankirtana is the heart of padayatra. Wherever we walk, whenever we enter a village or conduct house programs we chant the holy names with every soul in attendance dancing along with us. It’s not a surprise to us since we are traveling with sankirtana eka pitaro, the father of sankirtana Himself, Lord Caitanya. Lokanath Swami said, “Celebrating the ‘World Holy Name’ festival is like celebrating the victory of the holy names all over the world param vijayate sri- krishna sankirtanam [1]. The ...

The annual Bhakti Sangam Festival is surely the most amazing event on this planet, with so many Maharajas and preachers sharing their realizations in seminars, and the evenings are spent in most sublime kirtans. Each seminar block has six presentations running parallel in various venues. Since there is such a huge crowd of devotees many topics can be offered by a variety of speakers to suit everyone's needs and attractions. 103 photos from the opening day of the festival, morning program and e...

ISKCON Govardhan Eco Village a 100 acre sustainable farming community and retreat center, based near Mumbai, India received the 2016 Green Apple Awards for Built Environment & Architectural Heritage Award for it’s Green Building initiatives from the Green Organization, UK, at a special ceremony on Monday August 8, 2016 at The Crystal, London Docklands – regarded as the most sustainable events venue in the UK. Radha Mohan Prabhu from the Bhaktivedanta Manor, on behalf of ISKCON GEV, received thi...

Taking part in last week's celebrations were Jagattarini Dasi and Bhurijana Dasa. The pair joined the movement at the height of the counter culture of the late-1960s. "We were young and those were hippy days," Ms Dasi said. Prior to becoming a Hare Krishna, Ms Dasi was a young Australian actress that went by the name Janne Wesley and starred opposite Mick Jagger in the 1970 film Ned Kelly. She said a visit to a temple in Los Angeles changed the course of her life. "Something was deeply moving fo...