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Pilgrim's Diary - January 15-17, 2002
by Vipramukhya Swami

January 15: I'm on a flight from Seattle to San Francisco to catch a connecting flight to Melbourne, Australia. Never been there before. My first trip to down under. It's also a free flight, thanks to an accumulation of frequent flyer miles.

It's dark outside. It's 8 PM. Nothing particularly exciting. Wish I had a devotee to accompany me, but I can't afford to pay anyone's airfare other than my own. Contrary to popular myth, not all sannyasis and gurus are rich, though Krsna is taking care of me.

Instead of giving the Sunday lecture at the Long Island temple a couple of nights ago, as originally planned, I decided to give the lecture in Hartford, Connecticut. My friend and Godbrother, Pyari Mohan, is the temple president of this small temple. It was a nice crowd, too. About 50 people I would estimate, which was a lot for their small temple room. I lectured on the Holy Name and the importance of japa, and there were lots of questions. It's nice when there are questions.

Then yesterday I flew to Seattle, and I spent the night in an airport hotel. It was a 3 star hotel, and I got a good price of only $35 by pre-booking on Priceline.com. I did this to give me some time to work on my computer and to rest in preparation for the long flight to Australia.

Pyari Mohan, the president of Hartford, Connecticut, in the USA, is a nice devotee. The Hartford temple is basically a single family house, and there is just a single family living in it: Pyari Mohan, his wife Jiva, and their two children.

Last May, after getting back from my trip to the Himalayas to collect Salagram Silas, I gave a Salagram Sila to Pyari and Jiva. Now their Salagram is being very gorgeously decorated on the temple altar. I was happy to see that they are taking care of Him so nicely.

Pyari Mohan is a professional magician, and he maintains his family almost entirely with this trade. He does magic shows at birthday parties, mostly for children, mostly on weekends, and gets paid $130 per show. He has two other part time jobs, one that he does once a week, every other week, and another that he does once a week every week. But his main income comes from the magic shows. He must be doing pretty well, because he just bought a new Honda Civic with his own money.

Pyari has taught me a number of his tricks. Formerly, as a teenager, I was also a professional magician doing magic shows at birthday parties, so we have a common interest. These days I am well known for doing simple coin and rubber band tricks to entertain gurukulis. I don't usually do anything too fancy that requires special equipment. But a professional magician like Pyari Mohan has a lot of equipment and very amusing and amazing tricks. After the Sunday lecture he and I both entertained a small group of devotees with various tricks.

Pyari Mohan gets all the children in the shows to chant the "magic words": Radha-Govinda. He tells them that these magic words are what makes the tricks work.

I guess that's about the extent of his preaching at the magic shows, but there does seem to be quite a lot of good preaching at the Sunday Feast. In fact, they have a wonderful program of giving a small packet of free books to every new person that comes to the temple each week. The books are sponsored by one of the congregational couples. It seemed like a great way to make someone feel comfortable and welcome on the first visit to the Hare Krishna temple.

I'll write more when I get to Australia. Hopefully the brush fires have been cleared up around Sydney. I guess I'll find out soon enough!

January 17, 5:20 AM, United Airlines Flight 863, Asian Pacific– This is a long journey, and it's not over yet. The trip to Australia for me is in three segments. The first was a flight from Seattle to San Francisco. Now I am completing a 13 and a half hour non-stop flight to Sydney. We still have an hour and a half to go. When I arrive and pass through customs and immigration, I'll have another leg of the journey to fly to Melbourne. From the door of the hotel in Seattle to the Sydney airport will be 24 hours of non-stop flight. And that's not the end of it. This much flying is a real austerity for me.

I don't like traveling. I like being in different places, but the act of getting there from point A to point B isn't to my liking. However, the payoff is when you get to the new place and meet devotees, talk about Krsna, hear the sweet sound of the mrdanga and karatals, see the deities, etc.

I lost a day somewhere. Only one night transpired, though it was a long night because the flight was going in the same direction that the sun travels around the world. But because the flight crosses the International Date Line in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the day advances. So there was no January 16 for me. I left on January 15, spent a night on the flight, and arrive on January 17.

The first order of business, after clearing immigration and customs and picking up my bags, will be to meet my disciple Devahotra, who will be there waiting to pick me up. Then I'll go to the Melbourne temple, shower, and worship my Govardhan and Salagram Silas. After that I can see what surprises the day holds.

I feel rested enough for now. I've chanted all of my rounds. In fact, just to be sure, I chanted two sets of rounds. I chanted rounds for January 16, the day that never happened, in the middle of the night, just so I wouldn't wind up missing any day's worth of japa. I don't know what's happening with my gayatri mantras. Guess it's time to chant now.

The sun has finally caught up with us, and now the eastern horizon, to the left side of the airplane, is fully light. I see sun on the clouds.

Although it was winter in England, New York, and Seattle where I just came from, it will be the middle of the summer in Australia. For that reason I'm traveling with two sets of clothes. I have both winter and summer gear with me. After spending 13 days in Australia, I will fly back to America and then go to Vancouver, Canada, for the month of February. Right back to winter weather.

If all goes well, and my financial plans work out this year, this will be the first of two visits to Australia this year. I hope to return again in November or December on an around the world trip ticket. The problem will be financing that trip. It will cost about 900 pounds sterling, originating in London. It's a very good price, and I'll get frequent flyer miles for that as well, giving me more free flights, like the one I'm on now.

I think it's cool that I'm flying to Australia for free. Too bad I couldn't have spent more time. The free flight had to be completed by January 31 to qualify, and all the flights were booked so I couldn't leave for Australia until now. So I'll get only 13 days this first time. That will give me just enough time to recover from this rediculously long flight before I have to do it again on my way back to Seattle. Maybe I'll bring back a kangaroo for the Vancouver temple.

7:45 AM - Sydney International Airport, Australia. Well, I'm here, but they have put us in an International transfer lounge. I don't officially go through customs and immigration until I get to Melbourne. The flight leaves in an hour and a half.

The airport is pleasant. I bought a couple of boomerangs. One for my mother, and one for Anadi Krsna in North Carolina. It's an old joke between us and I thought he'd enjoy it. The aboriginals of Australia are famous for their artwork, including boomerangs.

A lot of devotees are asking me how the security is at the airports these days since September the 11th. Well, it varies, but it's pretty tight. Since leaving London over a week ago, my shoes have been searched twice and my Salagram Silas have been handled by a man wearing latex gloves. They x-ray every carry-on. Sometimes they also x-ray the checked luggage, as they did when I was flying from Seattle to San Francisco the other day. They sometimes x-ray bags twice. They sometimes ask for ID at the door of the airplane.

All in all, however, although it is inconvenient, it doesn't create that much of a delay as long as you arrive early enough at the airport. In Seattle they were recommending two hours before an intnernational flight and 1 1/2 hours before a domestic flight. I usually give it a half hour more than that and wind up sitting around the airport waiting lounge typing stuff like this into my Palm keyboard.

It would be difficult for a hijacker to take control of a plane in these conditions, and that's good for passengers, and it's better safe than sorry. Even if a hijacker did take a plane, there's a strong possibility that the passengers onboard would revolt and overtake the hijacker. New measures already in place on some planes and soon to be in place on all domestic flights within the USA will include a secured pilot's cabin with bulletproof shields, etc.

There are still people flying all over the world, and everything is functioning more or less normally.

It's a sunny day and it's warm. Already the sweater I wore on the flight here has become completely useless and I stuffed it away in one of my carry-on bags. I haven't been outside yet, but, after all, it's summer here.

3 PM, ISKCON Melbourne: I've arrived. Devahotra and temple president Aniruddha dasa picked me up at the airport. Devahotra just flew in and arrived from Tasmania around the same time my flight got in. I have bathed, my Salagrams have been worshipped, and I had darshan of the deities in the temple room (see photos).

I will write more tomorrow. I haven't eaten anything since the day before yesterday by the calendar (yesterday by my body clock). We're going out to someone's house soon for prasadam.

© CHAKRA 18 January 2002