More from Mayapura

As mentioned in my last post, the month long Mayapura festival is on and so there are thousands of devotees from all over the world here right now. For the first week there were parikramas (transcendental tours to special places where Krsna and/or His devotees had pastimes) to the nine islands of Nadia, the land of Lord Chaitanya. We unfortunately managed to miss out on all of these. But in the evenings when the devotees returned there were a variety of different activities/events. One of these was the Elephant Procession where Radha-Madhava are taken around the complex on the back of an elephant along with another elephant. At different points along the procession they stop and allow the devotees to make offerings of ghee lamps/candles and incense. All along the path there are mandala paintings that are done with dyed rice flower and in some cases different coloured flower petals.







You can just see Radha-Madhava sitting in
front of the temporary muhut





Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai accompany the procession
on an Bullock cart



Here the devotees are making their offerings

Below are the different mandalas along the path:

This one is being made with flower petals

This one is made with rice flour

I think this is chalk but I'm not too sure

Flower petals and rice flour...

Every night there is a wonderful kirtan party that goes around the Chandraya for several hours. There are thousands of participants including thousands of Indians that come from all over to visit the temple and take dharsan of the Deities. In the morning many devotees set-up stalls in the temple courtyard of all varieties to sell books, prasadam, dolls, paintings, clothing, etc.

Temple courtyard



More from the courtyard




Here you can see Gauranga, Sadhana's son, behind a gas
cooker while he fries up kachoris to order. Behind
him you can see Surabhi selling her T-shirts from
a suitcase. She is collecting on behalf of Prabhupada disciples
to pay for their accommodation during the festival so that
they can stay for free...maybe we should have booked
with her!




Mindhi that I had done by a Russian mataji