Gurumaharaja contacted his godbrothers Srila BG Narasingha Maharaja and Sripada BB Visnu Maharaja, who have established an asram in Sri Rangapatna close to Mysore in Karnataka state, where they have been worshipping Sri Sri Guru Gauranga Radha Madhava for the last ten years. They are good, old friends of Gurumaharja, who were also visiting Srila BR Sridhara Dev Goswami and Srila BP Puri Goswami. While in Vrindavana, before the time of Vrinda Kunja, Gurumaharaja used to stay in their Rupanuga Bhajan Asram. Combining a visit to his godbrothers, together with the visit of the holy places, as well as taking the opportunity to promote the idea of the WVA to the Vaisnavas of the south, this tour had a multiple purpose. Gurumaharaja is customed to that.

After hearing of the desire of Gurumaharaja to come, and knowing well the south of India, Narasingha Maharaja and Visnu Maharaja worked out a plan for the visit and invited us, managing all the details and costs for the tour. I feel very fortunate that Gurumaharaja allowed me to come with him.

We left Vrindavana on 21st Nov. and spent one night in Delhi at the house of Ramesh prabhu, who is an old friend of Gurumaharaja, who helped also in registering the mission in India. Next day, early morning, we left for Bangalore.

Visnu Maharaja received us in the airport and brought us to their preaching center in the city. Narasingha Maharaja with some of his disciples, amongst them Madhava Maharaja, were waiting there. After taking prasada, Narasingha Maharaja suggested making some changes to the original tour plan. The weather forecast predicted rain, and that did not favour the original plan. The new plan was to leave at noon to Tirupati, which is about 6 hours drive from Bangalore, to visit the temple there and come back the next day. We would then go to Govindaji Gardens and from there visit other interesting places.

That means, short after the arrival, we left for Tirupati, guided by Visnu Maharaja. Passing through extraordinary landscapes under rain, we reached the town of Tirupati. The place of pilgrimage is known as Tirumala. That is situated on a mountain above Tirupati. So it took us one hour more to drive up the mountain. All the ways up were signs:

”This is a holy place.” “Do not smoke here”
Then after few meters: “Do not eat meat here”,
Then again: “Do not throw waste away.”
“Only pass urine in the toiletes”
“Do not spit on the ground” and so on.

All these signs gave us some idea about what was to be found there on the hill. When we reached there, we were in a village with many temples. Everyone and everything there was related to Lord Balaji, who is the deity of the main temple. Tirumala is the most “crowded” place of pilgrimage in south India. So it requires big organisation to deal with this. As Visnu Maharaj had told us before, there are different types of darshan that one can get. It all depends on the donation you pay. Of course, there is also a free darshan, but then you can not get very close to the Lord. There is a 50 Rs (1 Euro) darshan, then a 200 Rs darshan, up to 12 500 Rs (means some 250 Euro). For the 200 Rs darshan you can attend the 3.30 AM puja and take a seat there for 30 Minutes. The more expensive darshan provides something more. We wanted to get the 200 Rs for the next day, but it was already booked up. So we took a 50 Rs darshan fo 9 AM.

We stayed over night in one of the many rooms for pilgrims, which had been donated by pious man, and the next morning we went to the temple.

We had to enter a queue to get to the entrance. Then from the entrance we had to stand in an other queue to get to the waiting room. There are 20 waiting rooms, each one fits around 300 people. At this time they were not all filled, because it was the off-season. While waiting we got a brochure with some dates and information about Tirumala. They say it is not known when this temple had been founded.

They say it is not known when this temple had been founded. An average about 30.000 pilgrims visit Tirumala every day. That mean, that in the on-season there are more than 100.000 people visiting the Lord a day.

After leaving the waiting room, we had to stand again in a queue to get into the temple area. Slowly but surely we were getting close to the entrance of the temple area but not yet to the temple. After we were inside, we could just wonder about all the details and all the opulence we saw there: huge and precisely carved stones; golden roofs, and so on. It is difficult to describe all this. Unfortunately we had had to leave the camera in the car, so there are no pictures available to see. I got a small idea about what vaikuntha worship means. It was really just a small idea about, based on what i percieved there.

While approaching the temple, many other queues coming from different sides where joining together. In almost every corner one could see another altar, with some puja going on. And then we were all of a sudden standing in front of the main entrance of the temple. We entered following the tempo of the queue. The inside was illuminated by only ghee lamps. It took us still some time to get into another room, before we went up some small stairs to get the darshan. The pilgrims in the queue were moving slowly in front of the Lord, and there were guards, who were pushing those who wanted to stop there for two, three or five seconds. Everyone had to walk by the Lord and immediately go back again, the same way out, parallel to the way they went in, secured by metal rails. The corridor was so narrow that hardly three people could stand next to each other.

When Gurumahraja came close to the reverse point – he was in front of us – and when he went through, pushed by the crowd behind, one of the guards took him back and allowed him to stand there right in front of the Lord for some extended time – maybe 10 seconds. After that they allowed also me to stand there and also Visnu Maharaja, but the forth devotee, who was with us, was pushed through because he was a local. Even though beeing from west, means allways some restriction in these holy places of South India, this time turned out to be a benediction. Then, after few meters from the entry, the queue was released from rail corridors, so everybody could move freely and see some of the other shrines around, or go to the prasadam distribution places - where there were many pots of a great variety of preparations.

Then we passed by the hundi, the pot for donation, and left a donation there. After that we saw the place where the donations are beeing counted by 108 Brahmanas. They were storing the donations on small hills. Later on, we got to know, that this is the small part of the donations, because rich people are sending their donations directily to the bank account. The temple of Tirumala is the richest temple in the world. It can hardly be estimated, how rich it is. Land, schools, restaurants and many other institution and properties in a huge area around Tirumala belong to the temple. After receiving this information and after taking the laddus (with each ticket you get two laddus) we were again on the way to Bangalore – taking with us a memorable experience.

After staying one night in Bangalore, we left in the early morning to the asram of Narasingha Maharaja, called Govindaji Gardens in Sri Ranga Patna. The devotees received us very attentively. Previousely I had heared a lot about Govindaji Gardens from different devotees, but beeing there now, I could see for myself how nice it was. From the appearance of the surroundings, the well arranged asram area, the nice deities and their temples, the friendly behaviour of the devotees and their dedication to the message of our divine guardians, everything was a very enthusing experience. Unlike in the visit to Tirumala, where I was impressed allmost speechlessly, I felt here, that I am receving something what is of great value for my practical spiritual life, means for the service to my spiritual master.

Like there is a difference between eating with eyes and with the mouth, so there is a similar difference between visiting a place of opulent worship of the Lord, and a place where our Guru-parampara, Gauranga and Radha Govindaji, are beeing worshiped and served. Looking at food can hardly satisfy our needs, while taking the food through our mouth can give us life and power to go on with our service.

The devotees from Govindaji Gardens are very much engaged in publishing books and films on the teaching of our Guru parampara. They have previousely published books such as: Evolution of Theism, Our Divine Guardians, The Ultimate Goal of Life, Sri Gayatri Mantrartha Dipika, Prakrta Rasa Aranya Chedini, Follow the Angels... and helped with the publication of many other books. One of the most famous of those is the biography on Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupada. A few days before our visit, they published “Encounters with Divinity” by Srila BR Sridhara Maharaja. All these books are treasures of the eternal truth, but some of them hold a great significance in dealing with the misconceptions of our philosophy in the modern days. Govindaji Gardens is also the home of Devavision film productions. We watched there the new documentary “The Universal Theacher”. It is a film about Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura and it was finished just around that time. The premiere of the film will be on Gaura-purnima in Mayapur. Gurumaharaja is also on the film with a short interview.

After the morning programs – Gurumaharaja was giving classes on the new book “Encounters with Divinity” - we used to visit different places in the area – Sri Ranga Patma, Mysore, Melkote and some other. On these visits, we saw some of the most ancient temples of Vaisnavism. Amongst those places were temples, where Ramanujacarya installed the deities personally and where the worship has been going on there since that times. We also took bath in the sacred Kaveri river, which flows just trough the Govindaji Gardens. Govindaji Gardens lies actually on an island between two arms of the Kaveri. Just next to the asram there is the famous Gosai Ghat. It is said that Baladeva Vidyabhusana would come there to do his writing. It is also a famous place because Ganga devi came once there to take a bath in the Kaveri.

While visiting some of these places, Gurumaharaja took the opportunity to meet some of the local Vaisnavas and present them some material of the WVA.

The next part of the tour was a journey to Mulki, the second asram of Narasingha Maharaja. Unfortunately I got sick at that time, and not wanting to disturb the tour, I remained in Govindaji Gardens, while Gurumaharaja left with Narasingha Maharaja and Visnu Maharaja to Mulki. There, for some days, they took pilgrimage to other interesting places, amongst them Udupi, where Gurumaharaja had a talk with Pejavara Swami - one of the prominent acaryas of the Madhva-sampradaya.

After the return from Mulki, we had to leave again the next day to Bangalore. Before our departure we checked once again if we had exchanged the preaching material we wanted to share. The next day in the evening Gurumaharaja gave a very nice class in the center in Bangalore. A few devotees came together and Gurumaharaja spoke of the necessity to surrender to a spiritual master if one wants to get control over the mind.

We left Bangalore the next morning, returning to Vrindavana to stay there for a few more days. All in all it was a very nice experience to travel with Gurumaharaja. He has allready given his reports of the journey on the sunday chats, so I am now writing here just a few insignificant impressions from my side and sending a few photos from the journey.

B.R. Swami