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DIARY OF A TRAVELING PREACHER >>

by His Holiness Indradyumna Swami

VOLUME IX (beginning from Jan 2008)

Chapter 11 - "Woodstock: A New Direction" (Poland, Woodstock Festival'2008, 01/08/08 - 03/08/08)

As always, we arrived in Kostrzyn a week before the Woodstock Festival. When I went to look at the enormous field where the event would take place, I was surprised to see that the main stage had already been set up. Hours later our boys arrived and began putting up our large village, including a 60-meter tent and our trademark 3,600-liter, one-ton cooking pot ...>>

Chapter 10 - "Times Have Changed" (Poland, 18/07/08 - 20/07/08)

Although we have had resounding success with our festivals this summer, we have had some setbacks as well. We thought we had another setback when Nandini dasi called the man in charge of the amphitheater in Miedzyzdroje, where our festival was to take place in two weeks. ...>>

Chapter 9 - "Special Mention " (Poland, 13/07/08 - 15/07/08)

News of the good weather along the Baltic Sea coast spread throughout Poland, and the beaches swelled with vacationers from all over the country. By the second day of Harinam on the crowded streets of Niechorze, the town was buzzing about our festival for that evening. As I brought the Harinam back to the festival site in the afternoon, a young man came up to me ...>>

Chapter 8 - "The Curse" (Poland, 05/07/08 - 12/07/08)

The devotees were in high spirits after our resounding success with the festival on the beachfront. The next day we drove to Mrzezyno, the site of our next program. Several devotees asked me whether we could go out chanting earlier than usual. I smiled. "Conserve your energy," I said. "We've got 43 more festivals to go." ...>>

Chapter 7 - "Can You See This?" (Poland, 01/07/08 - 04/07/08)

The first two festivals of the Polish tour went exceptionally well, with thousands of people attending. Throughout both of them, however, devotees were meditating on the third festival - in the town where the deputy mayor had almost succeeded in canceling the event. It would be our biggest and most prestigious festival of the summer ...>>

Chapter 6 - "Enemies in Powerful Position" (Poland, May 2008)

I arrived back in Europe in early May and met with Jayatam dasa and Nandini dasi to discuss the summer Festival of India tour in Poland. We spend the entire year organizing the 50 festivals, including the Woodstock Festival, that we hold along the Baltic Sea coast. In total, the festivals attract some 750,000 people ...>>

Chapter 5 - "Hurricane Katrina Revisited" (New Orleans, USA, 13/04/08 - 14/04/08)

During my preaching tour in the United States, I was invited to visit New Talavan, an ISKCON rural community in Mississippi. My Godbrother Yogindra Vandana das picked me up at the airport in New Orleans. As we drove through the city I was impressed by the beauty of the old southern buildings, but soon I was shocked to see several neighborhoods still ramshackle and abandoned after being flooded by Hurricane Katrina two and a half years ago ...>>

Chapter 4 - "Taxi Driver Wisdom" (New York, USA, 09/04/08)

One day, Gadadhara Pandit das and I took advantage of being in New York to go shopping for sound equipment for my festival tour in Poland. After several hours I noticed it was getting late. "It's almost five PM," I said. "If we're going to make it back to the temple for the program tonight we'll have to hurry. Let's take a taxi." As we stood on a street corner trying to hail a taxi, I turned to Gadadhara, "I have a few questions about New York for my next diary chapter," I said. "A cab driver might be a good person to ask."...>>

Chapter 3 - "Pastimes of the Holy Names" (On the way to Chile, 01/03/08 - 15/03/08)

In early March, I boarded a flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta, where I would catch an onward flight to Santiago, Chile. It had been three years since my last visit to the Chilean yatra, and I was excited about seeing the devotees there again. When the flight landed in Atlanta, I went to the boarding gate for Santiago. The boarding area was crowded, and the only seat available was in front of a television screen showing a news report about a woman who had become ill on a recent flight across the United States. ...>>

Chapter 2 - "The Mother Temple" (Bali, Indonesia, 29/01/08 - 13/02/08)

On the flight from Hong Kong to Bali, I thought about a conversation I had with my Godbrother B. B. Govinda Maharaja the previous day. We were talking about seeing Srila Prabhupada at the Detroit airport in 1971. It was our first meeting with Srila Prabhupada, and I asked Maharaja if he remembered anything from Srila Prabhupada’s arrival address. “Yes,” he said smiling. “Srila Prabhupada leaned forward from his chair at one point and said, ‘Please believe me when I say you are not the material body.’ ...>>

Chapter 1 - "A Perfect Ending" (Hong Kong, 19/01/08 - 28/01/08)

The devotees on our tour were tired from seven weeks of festivals throughout Australia and New Zealand, but they looked forward to the final two programs, to be held in Hong Kong. But we almost didn't make it. The day before our departure from Auckland, our Russian and Ukrainian devotees had not yet been granted visas for Hong Kong. That night I called Chandrasekhar das, one of the leaders in the temple there. "It's 9 PM," I said. "We're due to fly out in nine hours. Have the visas come through?" ...>>

volume VI     volume VII      volume VIII      volume IX

all chapters