Pilgrim's Diary - Salagram Found
By Vipramukhya Swami

Wednesday, March 14, 2001 3:10 PM

I'm sitting in my seat on Royal Brunei Airlines flight number 107. The aircraft has not begun to move yet. First stop will be Dubai, where we have to wait for 6 hours before our flight to London. There's a couple of passengers that they are waiting for who are held up at the immigration line.

This ends my India/Nepal Pilgrimage.

The big question on a number of our reader's minds, of course, is what happened to my missing baggage? Well, I got it back. It was the very last suitcase off the very last flight possible before my departure for England. As I said before, Krishna always seems to protect His devotees, but only at the last minute.

In the end I am leaving India with $280 U.S. in traveler's checks, and a hundred or two hundred Indian rupees left over, which is worth only two or three dollars.

Thursday, March 15, 2001

Time zones make traveling interesting. Right now it's 9:30 AM in India. But I'm not in India. I'm in an airplane 31,000 feet above Germany, a little east of Frankfurt. Our ground speed is about 500 miles per hour (800 km/h). Below us it is 5 AM, and in London, where I will be arriving shortly, it is 4 AM.

I haven't slept much at all during my two flights back to London, one from Calcutta to Dubai, one from Dubai to London. We had a 7-hour wait in Dubai during which time we could not leave the airport. I was unable to sleep there. I'm totally exhausted, but still unable to sleep. I've finished half of my rounds.

When I get back it will be 5:30 AM in London on Thursday morning, assuming we won't have to wait too long to land at Heathrow Airport, which is a common phenomena due to air traffic control. By the time I clear immigration and customs it should be around 6:15. I'll probably have some devotees waiting for me at the airport. I would expect Panca-pandava perhaps. Prema Lila might also be there. They'll drive me back to Bhaktivedanta Manor, and then I'll have to shower, but on fresh clothing, and worship my Silas.

All of the Salagram Silas are with me now. They are not in the checked baggage. They're in cabin baggage, and I feel safe about that.

After doing my puja, I'll be offered some breakfast, and then I'll be expected to resume my temple president role for some, and spiritual master role for others.

I've learned some lessons on this Pilgrimage to India and Nepal. 1) Krishna has reinforced the idea within me that He protects His devotees, but often makes us wait until the last moment to do so. He probably does that to increase our transcendental anxiety and dependence upon Him. 2) I worry too much. 3) Salagram Silas are used to cold water since the Gandaki River is ice cold. 4) I figured out how to make Gulab Kali, the elephant in Mayapur, not only roar, but trumpet - but I never told that story here, or how I first made friends with that elephant 18 years ago.

If you've been following these Pilgrim's Diary stories, I thank you for taking your valuable time to do so. I hope I've been able to successfully share with you the on-the-spot experiences of being in various exotic places such as Mayapur, Jagannath Puri and the Gandaki River valley in Nepal.

One thing I didn't say about the flight from Jomsom, Nepal, back to Pokhara. I mentioned back then, perhaps a little more than a week and a half ago, that it was a rough and scary flight. I suppose I could have told you how scary by letting you know that a lady sitting in front of Raganuga Bhakti actually urinated on herself when it seem the plane was about to fall out of the sky. That's not very pleasant, but it's true.

Fortunately, the big airplanes, like the jet I'm flying in right now at 31,000 feet, tend to be a bit steadier than that flight out through the Himalayas.

Although it seems like it takes forever to get back to London from India, it's nothing compared to what it was like to get back from India when I used to live in Vancouver, Canada. I'm looking forward to whatever other adventures the present and future have to offer. For although I won't be living in India, Bhaktivedanta Manor itself is a holy place of Pilgrimage because Srila Prabhupada personally stayed there and installed the Radha-Gokulananda deities. So in that sense, though my Pilgrim's Diaries to India and Nepal are now ending for this time around, my adventures in the world of ISKCON are continuing.

Although I'm the temple president of Bhaktivedanta Manor, I'll be traveling some more this year. This year I hope to visit Germany at least once. Perhaps I will visit France as well. I'll visit Northern Ireland a few times. I expect to travel to North America twice this year, including dropping in on New York, Atlanta, Vancouver and Spanish Fork, Utah. I hope to visit my Mother near New Haven, Connecticut.

Gee, you could say I travel a lot for a temple president. Perhaps so, but I have other duties besides being a temple president and that's why I go.

© CHAKRA 21 March 2001

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