ISKCON Sri Radha Krishna Temple

'Hare Krishna, Hare Rama'
This afternoon we set off in our little rickshaw and met friends here at the temple. It is quite an impressive series of building climbing up a hill. With thousands of others, we lined up and were fed into the temple like cattle. At first we had to leave our cameras and Daisy's backpack with a man who gave us a tag and put our things behind his desk near a rack. This unsettled me and i worried aobut my camera for a little while until the experience that is the temple took over. We then moved to another desk where another man gave us a tag and we all gave him our shoes. We followed the others and wound our way up stairs and along pathways, all the while climing up the series of building and walkways. We were first led into a little room that had a priest laying flowers at a statue of Krishna. The statue was covered with candles and flowers. We then passed into another room with a similar priest. The priests have shaved heads with a little pony tail at the back and wear orange robes. They also have a stripe of white paint down between their eyes. We were finally led into the main temple. Apparently we had walked up a certain amount of steps which represent the journey to nirvana or the journey we must take to rid our lives of material things. The main temple was a huge room that inside reached up four or five stories. Around the upper levels were walkways with candles and oils burning that looked down into the main area. At the end were three stalls that contained statues of Krishna in three forms. The ceiling had a series of painting depicting Krishna when he lived on earth as a man. The paintings were in quite a romantic style, almost European masters in style and I was quite surpised to see this. We were led around the side of the main room and gave our names to a priest who chanted them and he said a prayer for all of us. He then gave us a little bowl of sweet minced food of some description. After this we filed in front of the three alters, stopping at the third. Here a priest said blessing on our behalf, and the other few thousand that were standing with us and blessed various bits of fruit, coconuts, bananas etc. We then moved around the side of the stalls were a lovely priest showed me how to bless myself using the heat from a candle. He then smiled broadly at Daisy and gave us some beautiful smelling white flowers. After this we moved back through the maze of buildings which all held various shops were we could buy religious things to help our journey. These included fantastic cashew and coconut biscuits ( which we thought would help our journey and bought some!) through to beads and incense. It really was quite a fascinating place. Daisy was very well behaved and sat quietly enough in our arms for us to be able to take it all in. It wasn't a particularly peaceful place but for the amount of people pouring in, it did a very good job of maintaining a form of serenity. Chris, Daisy and I stood out like shining beacons but for the first time it was in a lovely way and the priest took special care of us and made sure that we had a good experience. We were passing through the bookshop area when a man pulled our firends aside and said that we needed some books and he would give them to us for free so we were given a book on philosophy (it looks very similar to 'The Watch Tower' actually so may not get read) and another book on the philosophy of yoga which I will probably take to bed with me tonight. Although I am enjoying reading V. S. Naipur's Age of Darkness, about his travels in India at the moment. We then wandered through and watched, listened and smelt a whole range of things. There was food everywhere and some of it was free. Chris was terribly brave and ate some free soupy stuff which they handed out in a leaf, moulded into a bowl. It was like rice pudding but bright yellow. I didn't try any. I was eating the cashew biscuits! It was a lovely place that we didn't feel threatened, despite the amount of people in such confined spaces as the temple areas and grounds. We continued to eat our way around the temple grounds. Daisy wanted to be a part of it all! She ate popcorn, masala dosa (bread/pancake thing) cashew biscuits and washed it all down with fanta softdrink. She fell asleep in the rickshaw coming home. We then cooked her dinner of mushrooms and omlette and she has fallen sound asleep. What a lovely and interesting day. By far the best we have experienced yet. We are making plans now to visit more.