Ow! I can barely walk this morning. My feet are still tender from the long walk in the hot sun the day before. I suppose I should have worn shoes like most of the other devotees, but I just did not realize that the parikrama would take sixteen hours!
Today's parikrama is much shorter, they tell me, but it does not matter: I could not walk another kilometer even if I wanted to. My feet are sore, not so much from the long walk yesterday, but from the hot surface of the roads. I was doing fine until about one o' clock when the sun made the roads so hot that they broiled my soles, making every rock and pebble I trod on a painful "Ow! Ooh! Ouch!" experience.
The parikrama party returns to the Math before about an hour before lunch. I wonder why the first day of the parikrama is so long (16 hours) and the second day is so short (6 hours)? And... is it more auspicious to wear shoes and complete the whole four-day parikrama of Nabadwip Dham, or not wear shoes and drop out after the first day? I report; you decide.
After lunch, Premasindhu Prabhu, his wife Mathurabasani Devi Dasi, his brother Krishnadas Prabhu and Sandra arrive from Johannesburg, South Africa, via Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkata (Calcutta). Srila Gurudeva is very pleased to see them. Premasindhu Prabhu has built and maintains a beautiful ashram for Srila Gurudeva in Lenasia, a suburb of Johannesburg.
URL: http://www.imonk.net/04/03/03.html