The Conch Blows its Horn! Is it time to party? The number five is flyin’ high in the sky over the Vaisnava world these days: Lord Krishna’s appearance (5000 years ago), Lord Caitanya’s ‘birth’ (500 years back) and ISKCON’s beginning (50 years ago). And lo and behold, October 2016 marks The Conch’s fifth birthday anniversary. The Conch newsletter (New Govardhana’s only) began in 2011 at the prompting of Karunika devi dasi. It was initially slated to be only four pages long, but th...

The Padayatra was arranged between ISKCON temple and the famous Jamalpur Jagannath Temple, which is about 10 km away. Sharp at 8.00 am, we started from our ISKCON temple with more than 150 devotees and many more joined on the way. The atmosphere was cloudy, but no rain, so we felt it’s Krsna's mercy; otherwise we generally have very hot days even during the rainy season. Eventually, it started raining very heavily in the evening, after the completion of the Padayatra. The yatra went on very sm...

Last Saturday, on September 24, history was created when ISKCON of Suriname held its first Ratha-yatra festival in the capital City of Paramaribo, with the Lord Jagannath cart parading through one of the busiest streets in the city. The festival was organised as part of ISKCON Suriname’s main 50th anniversary initiative. The procession began at 5:00 pm sharp with the ribbon cutting done by the Raghoebier family, who, over a decade ago, had kindly provided the facility in Paramaribo that ISKCON...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in New York by our dear Srila Prabhupada. As a special offering to His Divine Grace, the ISKCON Perth Temple with the help of the congregational devotees had planned to hold one program every day on the Holy Name during the 18 day span of the celebration

We would like to take this opportunity to thank HH Bhakti Raghava Swami for his blessings and encouragement which were so essential for the devotees. Our ever grateful obeisances are due to HH Kavichandra Swami and HH Ramai Swami, the GBCs of Indonesia, for their support and guidance to always looking for new avenues for sankirtan. Our humble obeisances to HH Subhag Swami for always reminding us of the importance of the Sankirtan movement of Mahaprabhu and inspiring us with the dedication of ...

During the padayatra, people would often ask us about Srila Prabhupada. They wanted to know why he was sitting and not saying anything, and others wanted to know if they could touch his feet. We took this as a good opportunity to explain to people about Srila Prabhupada. The sun was blazing but with a cool breeze accompanying it, the procession kept moving. It was a joyous walk with many African people joining us; they sang, danced and jumped in ecstasy as they all tried to get some mercy. We e...

Honourable Mano Ganesan – Minster of National Coexistence Dialogue and Official Languages, attended the Sri Krishna Janmastami celebration at Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple. He was offered Golden shawl, Prasadam and Garland. He gave a memento in honour of Srila Prabhupada for the 50th Anniversary of ISKCON.

Every year over 100,000 people line the streets of Towoomba in Queensland Australia for the Grand Floral Street Parade. This year on the 17th Sept Iskcon Bhakti Centre Gold Coast participated with our Rathyatra cart. Jaganath, Subhadra and Baladev were so well recieved that we won first prize. The theme is flowers so who does flowers better than the Hare Krishnas? The cart was decorated by Sukla Devi Dasi, Rasarani Devi Dasi and Dhruva Das who worked on it for 5hours before the parade. So m...