Caru das left for India early Sunday morning January 3rd via Delta from SLC to Atlanta to Amsterdam and Mumbai. Due to the expert booking of the tickets by Kiran Kamdar there were no long layovers. He basically got out of one plane and walked to another gate where boarding was in progress. It was the easiest India trip he’s ever made.

There he was accommodated in one of the excellent guest rooms by Nakula das, guest master. Radhanatha Swami was in Delhi with a number of devotees for the launching of paperback version of his book, The Journey Home. Gouranga was with him, but instructed the devotees in Chowapatty to take every opportunity to hear from Caru. Thus he gave an afternoon class the day he arrived, and three classes in each of the next two days. Only two of them provided him an opportunity to use power points but they were the best received, further revealing the potency of this type media. Gouranga also instructed Nakula to take all power points from Caru’s computer with a flash drive. Caru’s room was equipped with wireless Internet, so he was able to work on new presentations when not lecturing. It was a very nice three-day stay, and he plans to return there after the present engagement. Nakula arranged a train ticket to Pune early Friday morning and took him to the train.

From the window he had his first good look at the inland of Maharastra, the rugged land from which legendary Shivaji waged a guerilla war of independence against the Moghul Auranzeb.

Pune devotees Rukmini Priya, Dina Saran, and Mahamantra Das showed Caru hospitality equal to Chowpatty, providing him the VIP guestroom, a brunch, a chauffeured trip to the new temple construction site (he took video of the building but had a problem getting it downloaded to the desktop) and lunch, before personally arranging a car and driver to take him the 35 kilometers east to Nisharagopachar ashram in the rural town of Uruli Kanchana.Gandhi and Manibhai Desai founded Nishargopachar Ashram as a Natural Cure Oasis in 1946. The 25 acres campus holds a capacity of about 150 guests, and considerable staff. More about this idyllic place in the next posting…