Some photos from Sunday's festival; with thanks to all - old and new - who attended and helped make it a happy offering to Krishna.
"Krishna's joyful face bears a gentle smile" - Mukunda-mala-stotra.
Sri Sri Radha-Madhava greeting Their guests. 
Sandra made Their Lordships this shimmering blue outfit for the occasion.
Two intrepid young Belfast devotees - Deva and Subhadra, (both born and brought up as Krishna devotees) have spent the past two summers touring America with a group of ISKCON youth. Deva tells the story here:
Since its humble beginnings as a two week summer trip in 1995, the Hare Krishna Youth Ministry Bus Tour has expanded into a ten week long adventure travelling across North America, Canada and Mexico, taking in nine rathayatras, thirty seven cities, thirty five US states and nine Canadian provinces. For the duration of the summer two yellow buses become home to fifty youth aged fifteen to twenty-five. The buses are fitted with bunk beds, a stove and oven, a toilet and even a shower!
The tour is organised and run by Manu das and his wife, Jaya Radhe dasi – both of whom grew up in ISKCON I was fortunate enough to go on the bus tour in 2005 and 2006.
The bus travels from rathayatra to rathayatra and attends one almost every weekend. At each new venue, bus tour participants do a variety of services ranging from setting up the festival site to making garlands, helping to decorate the rath cart, adding youthful exuberance to the parade itself, providing entertainment on the main stage, serving prasadam and disassembling the site after the festival.
This year’s entertainment included not only melodious bhajans and lively kirtans from many talented individuals, but also two plays. The first told the story of Lord Jagannatha’s appearance on earth. The second was “Big Fish, Little Fish” or “Fish Out Of Water”, an ISKCON classic brought into the twenty first century by Bhakti Marg Swami’s directorial expertise. In the drama Little Fish struggles to cope with life on dry land, which is made worse by his demanding wife and dead-end job. This is an extended metaphor showing how we try to be happy without Krishna and often fail miserably. 
We were also lucky enough to have Anapayani dasi travelling with us. Anapayani, like Manu and Jaya Radhe, grew up in Srila Prabhupada’s movement and is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer with her own dance academy in Alachua. As well as performing Bharatnatyam dances with three of her students, Anapayani choreographed a dance telling the story of the Dashavatara – or Krishna’s ten incarnations. The fusion between classical Indian and modern dance styles, including ballet, delighted audiences from coast to coast.
Between rathayatras the bus tour spends time at various temples – helping with service, going on harinam and often putting on a performance for the local devotees. We staged a number of performances in halls and theatres which attracted sizeable crowds, most notably in Eastern Canada where devotees had not preached in over 15 years.
When we weren’t being Krsna conscious we made time for other wholesome sorts of fun – playing volleyball, camping on the beach in Mexico, sightseeing in Hollywood, swimming in Yellowstone National Park’s hot springs, horse riding, hiking and abseiling in Death Valley Canyon in Utah’s desert and whale watching in Nova Scotia. Not to mention all the ice cream we managed to eat along the way….
If you were to ask me which part of the bus tour stood out to me most, I would be pushed to pinpoint just one event. Perhaps it would be the night time harinam on the Strip in Las Vegas. It felt very surreal to be one of fifty brightly dressed youth dancing and chanting amongst the bright lights and casinos in a city which symbolises everything contrary to our beliefs. My sense of confusion was added to when I spotted Las Vegas’ miniature Eiffel Tower. I gave up as we walked past Madame Tussaud’s. I was simply too tired to remind myself that we were in fact in Las Vegas, and not Paris or London.
Following the harinam we returned to the car park to discover that the boys’ bus had broken down. Dravinkasha Prabhu (one of our dedicated drivers) drove around until 2am when he found the required part. Meanwhile we killed the time by sitting in a circle on the concrete in our saris and dhotis and played Chinese Whispers. We drove through the Mojave desert in the early hours of the morning, arriving in Los Angeles in time for Deity Greeting.
Picture: Street-chanting in Quebec.
This festival celebrates the astonishing event of little boy Krishna holding Govardhana mountain like an umbrella, to shelter His beloved friends from devastating storms and floods.
Festivals such as this help us to explore and understand the deep mystery of Krishna's extraordinary pastimes; how God – grave and awesome, appears as an enchantingly beautiful cowherd boy, just to have fun with His friends.
Although there are many layers of meaning in Krishna's pastimes, an essential feature of this story, is the exchange of love between Krishna and His devotees. To please Him, the residents of Vrindavana willingly gave up their secure customs and traditions, risking the anger of Lord Indra; in return Krishna protected them from the resulting catastrophe.
Under the shelter of Govardhana Hill, Krishna related with each of His friends according to their individual desires; as a joking, playful friend with the cowherd boys; as a lover to the beautiful milk-maids; as a son to his parents. These intimate and exquisite loving exchanges, increased their attachment to Krishna and the devastating storms went by unnoticed.
All this, while Krishna jauntily holds Mount Govardhana aloft, on the littlest finger of the weakest arm, as if to say, “I may look like a little boy, but I am God and though you may try, you can’t mess with Me!”
Govardhana really exists in Vrindavana south of Delhi, and five-thousand years ago, Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, really lifted it on the little finger of His left hand. The occasion is recorded in the sacred book “Srimad Bhagavatam" and millennia later, is celebrated world-wide, by thousands of people.
Devotees of Krishna celebrate the festival by reading and discussing the story amongst themselves and by congregating at the temple to chant, dance and offer mountains of sumptuous foodstuffs to Sri Giridhari – the lifter of Govardhana Hill. To read the story of Govardhana-puja for yourself, please see chapters 24 – 27 of Krishna Book. Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 10 Chapters 24-27. Anandana-vrindavana-campu by Srila Kavi karnapura – chapter 15.
In the West, the season of autumn inspires poetry, with it’s delicate morning mists and dew-spangled spiders-webs; golden sunshine and the smell of bonfires and autumn leaves. In Celtic lore, this was a time of year when the veil between this world and the “other” was supposed to be thinner than normal, culminating in the festival of Samhain or Halloween.
For Vaishnavas, the charms of autumn are enhanced by the season of Karttika, the lunar month which falls across October and November. This month is described as especially dear to Krishna and traditionally Vaishnavas keep it sacred to acts of devotion and vows of austerity aimed at increasing their spiritual strength and drawing closer to Krishna. Devotees may vow to rise earlier; to chant more rounds on their beads, daily; to spend more time reading scripture; to eat less or more simply; the hardier ones even take their showers cold. And everyone observes the daily offering of a lighted candle or ghee-lamp to Krishna, while singing the Damodarastaka song, which particularly belongs to this month.
Several of the more sublime, or “confidential” festivals fall in this period; the celebration of Krishna’s rasa-lila, and the appearance-day of Sri Radha-kunda, for example, as well as Govardhana-puja, so that Karttika is a mixture of austerity and sweetness, as devotees try to lessen their bodily needs, while correspondingly spending more time with Krishna.
To this end, many Vaishnavas from all over the world set off on pilgrimage to Vrindavana “land of Krishna”, at this time. At ISKCON’s Krishna-Balarama temple in Vrindavana, guest-houses and living-quarters strain at the seams, as throngs of devotees arrive for Karttika. Leaving their ordinary lives behind for a few weeks, the pilgrims visit the sacred sites of Krsna’s pastimes and take part in the lively kirtan parties, at the temple.
It’s worth it to come all this way just to chant and dance in such huge numbers, and families in particular find this a good time to be together in a spiritual atmosphere , away from school and jobs. Children enjoy the kirtans and the offering of lights which is beautiful when seen in mass like this.
So whether the old Celtic beliefs are true or not, Vaishnavas try to spend this time diminishing the veils between them and Krishna!
A Rose-Offering for Krishna.
Hearty thanks, on behalf of Sri Sri Radha-Madhava, to all those who sponsored roses for Their Lordships rose-garden. By your generosity, we've been able to order enough roses to fill the garden - so when they are grown it will look opulent and bountiful. Two of the roses ordered have won awards for their exceptional fragrance.
Requests for sponsorship came from as far away as the USA - from Radhanatha and Sukhada in California (I think) . Akandadhi das in Wales sponsored roses in memory of his father and Madhava-priya a rose for each of her five children. Sonja and Niall, Dr. Shalini Nalwad, Shaunaka Rishi and the three 'Ks' - Karen, Kate and Keshava completed the quota. Thank you all very much!
"If one offers me with love and devotion, a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water, I will accept it" - Bhagavad-Gita 9.26
