A trip to Isckon, Mayapur
So, this year, on 1st Jan 2020, my husband and I started our trip to Iskcon, Mayapur. We started from Kolkata at 5:15 AM in a Volvo booked through the Isckon website. Mayapur is 130Kms from Kolkata by road. The roads are good throughout and well maintained. It takes approximately 5 hours to reach Mayapur. The bus stopped around 8:30 AM for a tea break and started in 15 mins. We reached Mayapur by 10:30 AM.
Mayapur is situated in the middle of the rivers Hoogly and Jalangi. It is one of the main of the nine islands of the Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s Dham Nabadwip. It is the holiest place in India. Devotees from various parts of the world come here to visit the Mayapur Chandroadaya Temple of Iskcon. When you reach the place, a devotee will escort you to the Bhawan you have booked. We stayed at Gada Bhawan. You need to carry your ID proofs and marriage certificate(if married). After the verification, we were allotted our room. By then the time was 1:30 PM and we were hungry. We freshened up and went out to look for the food options. The lunch coupons were finished. So, we went to Govindas, which is a restaurant serving Satvik food, located inside the campus. We finished lunch by 2:30 PM. Post lunch, we were looking around and that’s when we saw an Iskcon tours service center. We went in, met the person-in-charge, and they planned for us a two-day trip, which covered almost 4 Dwips. Our trip started at 3 PM. We took a ferry from the LaunchPad, which was a 15 minutes ride to the Nabadwip.
Inside the main Isckon temple, you will see the magnificent deities of Pancatattva, Lord Nrisingha Dev, Srila Prabhupada and Radha-Madhav with the Gopis. It is beautiful to witness when the aarti is happening and people are dancing to the tunes of Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.
The food here is so good that you will forget the use of garlic and onions once you eat this. They provide Satvik food. You will get almost everything from pizzas, pastries, pasta, biryani, fried rice, Manchurian, and traditional South Indian meals. Everything is Bhagwan Prasadam as these food are served to us by first serving it to God.
Since ours was a two-day trip, we returned on 2nd Jan at 4 PM in the Isckon bus. The take away from this trip is that every once in a while I and my husband would be visiting Isckon. Living in this fast-paced life, where everyone is running behind one goal after another, it is important to take a pause and admire the present. take a deep breath and be grateful for the blessing that we have been given. It was so peaceful at the ISCKON premises. Things were going in slow motion. The evening aartis are still ringing in our ears. And it gives goosebumps to be there surrounded with so many people with the same mindset, spirituality, and energy.
So, this was our trip to ISCKON. Tell us whether your story of spirituality.
