Kartika is glorified in the Puranas as very special for making spiritual advancement and the best place to be in Kartika is Sri Braja Dham
People have heart attacks in Vrindavana – not just physical, but spiritual ones too. Holy places ooze with a divine influence that overthrows material consciousness and inexplicably ushers one towards transcendence.
Braja Vallabhi Dasi, a beloved second-generation devotee who helped organize many youth and outreach programs, passed away in a tragic car accident while on her way to attend a seminar at Govardhana Hill in Vrindavan, India, on November 11th. She was just twenty-three years old.
A video by Anton Aleksandrov.
A video by Ananta Vrindavan.
A video by Anton Aleksandrov.
The famous 3-hour parikrama around Vrindavan encompasses walking around thousands of temples, as many samadhis and a multitude of cows, brahmanas, sadhus and sacred places of all kinds. Some Vraja-vasis do it once or even twice a day. A video by Ananta Vrindavan.
Sri Varsana Dham is the place where Srimati Radharani displayed Her childhood pastimes. This video depicts various places around Varsana. Music by Tarana & friends - Love In Action.
Vrinda devi helps Purnamasi plan and orchestrate Radha and Krsna's daily pastimes in Vrindavan. Indradyumna Swami's parikrama party had the good fortune to visit her kunda (pond) and discuss her glories and chant her holy names in that beautiful and sanctified abode. A video by Ananta Vrindavan.
Govardhana Puja – the sweetest day of the year – celebrates the day when Lord Krishna as a young boy lifted Govardhana Hill with just His little finger, to protect the residents of Vrindavana village from Lord Indra’s furious thunderstorm. Devotees around the world pour their hearts into their own offerings for the late October festival, engaging their creativity in Krishna’s service to often astonishing effect.
Reconnection, a 40-minute film written and directed by Siberian devotee couple Shyam Gopal Das and his wife Vijaya Radhika Dasi, has been making a real splash in the film festival world. A cinema verite piece, it tells the story of tech professional Sean Fletcher, a typical victim of our Internet-addicted age. Emotionally and spiritually cut-off, Sean stops in Vrindavan, India on the way to Nepal, and finds that the sacred village breaks him down to his core and helps him reconnect with his own heart and inner values.
Parikrama around Govardhan Hill during the month of Kartika in Vrindavan, India is a favorite devotional activity for devotees of Lord Krsna. Chanting softly on their prayer beads a group of 400 devotees relished every step of the 24 kilometer walk. Ananta Vrindavan dasa’s outstanding footage captured the bliss of the pilgrimage.
It is said that all holy places in India exist in their original forms in Sri Vrindavan Dhama. Indradyumna Swami and his parikrama group visited Badrinath (Badrikasrama) a two-hour drive from Vrindavan town through the countryside. As they approached Badrinath they were surprised to see a small mountain range. A video by Ananta Vrindavan.
The Madan Mohan Temple, established by Sanatan Goswami, was the first temple to be erected in Vrindavan on the order of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu 500 years ago. Near the temple is the sacred samadhi of Sanatan Goswami. A video by Ananta Vrindavan.
Talavan is one of the 12 sacred forests of Sri Vrindavan Dham in India. Even today, it retains much of the beauty it had 5,000 years ago during the appearance of Lord Sri Krsna. Indradyumna Swami and his parikrama party sat and discussed Krsna and Balarama's pastimes in that transcendental abode and relished the sweet chanting of Krsna's holy names for many hours. A video by Ananta Vrindavan.
Food for Life Vrindavan (http://fflvrindavan.org) is a humanitarian aid organisation officially recognized by the Indian government. For the last ten years, we have worked in the poorest villages in the Vrindavan area (120 Km south of New Delhi).
On May 9, 2009 abhisheka ceremony of Radha-Ramana took place in His temple. It was His appearance day. The Abhisheka lasted for three hours and started from bringing water from the Yamuna. According to the tradition, young pujaris, who are the sons of the chief Goswamis, went to the Yamuna. A video by Vrindavan Experience.
A video by Ananta Vrindavan.
Indradyumna Swami and his parikrama group visiting Mathura.
The Govardhana Retreat has been going on since 2000 – the first with only thirty students under the trees surrounding Giriraja (we still remember having to crawl under a barbed wire fence to get to our spot!), the most recent with almost a thousand students, now at a rented ashram.
Today we’re marking the life of a great saint in our tradition who lived 500 years ago. He was the son of a Sri Vaishnava brahmana, Venkata Bhatta, and was born in a village near the famous temple town of Sri Rangam.
In 1891, Hindus who were bathing in the sacred river Yamuna witnessed an amazing scene. A ship with a name in an unknown language was approaching.
Prema-sarovara is a lake formed from the tears of Radha and Krsna when They felt intense separation from each other. A video by Ananta Vrindavan, music by Jahnavi Harrison.
A video by Ananta Vrindavan dasa.
Talavan is one of the12 major forests of Vrindavan. Nestled in the paddy fields of Talavan is a beautiful temple dedicated to Lord Balarama, who killed the ass-demon Denakasura there. Indradyumna Swamiand his parikrama party enjoyed a wonderful day at Talavan having long kirtans and recounting the numerous pastimes that took place in that transcendental abode.
There are devotees of the Lord who circumambulate Govardhana hill two, or even three times, a day. Athough busy with visiting other holy places in Vrajamandala Indradyumna Swami's group of 350 devotees also managed to do parikrama around Giriraja twice during their stay in Vrindavan.
Prema-sarovara is a lake formed from the tears of Radha and Krsna when They felt intense separation from each other. A video of Indradyumna Swami's parikrama party visiting Prema Sarovara, accompanied by Jahnavi Harrison's music.
Aerial footage of Kusum Sarovara with the music of Jahnavi Harrison.
The festival, which ran from October 9th to 13th at Delhi’s NDMC Convention Centre, is ranked in the top two environmental film festivals in the world. It deals with a vast range of issues including climate change, natural heritage conservation, biodiversity, and renewable energy. This year, the festival received a total of 178 entries from India and around the world.
"Rescuing the Stolen River", a feature documentary produced by ISKCON devotees will be premiered at Asia's largest green film festival in New Delhi on Saturday October 10th at 11.30AM at the Delhi Convention Centre. The admission is free, but registration is required: http://vat2015.cmsvatavaran.org
A video by Paul Tuffery.
More than 1300 films were submitted for the Indian Cine Film Festival. "Reconnection", the film about Vrindavan, has won the Jury Special Mention Award, that was presented to us by Indian filmmaking legend G.L. Bhardwaj. Listen to him speaking as he compares "Reconnection" to his own film “Land of Krishna” that won multiple International and National nominations including Presidential award. On the video: Maksim Varfolomeev (Shyam Gopal Das), the director of Reconnection, picking up the award, September 19th 2015. For more info check us on fb.com/ReconnectionFilm
A video by Vrindavan Experience.
ISKCON’S very first literature on Vraja Mandala Parikrama, the book promises its readers a walkthrough of Vraja through its 608 colorful pages and poetically gives one the immersion experience of the sights and the smells of the twelve forests of Vrindavan. It contains 30 chapters each for a day of parikrama with 246 photographs, 107 paintings and 28 precise route maps obtained from Google Earth.
“In Vrindavan” is a new Music Video and Single by the Kirtaniyas featuring children from Food for Life Vrindavan, an all girl’s charity school run on donation basis in Vrindavan, India.
My trip to India brought a few surprises. It’s been some years since I was last there and things are changing fast. The cities are still the same bustling mess of teeming madness, much like anywhere else I suppose, but it’s in the outlying rural areas that I was most shocked.
“People go to Vrindavan and their lives change… for the better,” says Shyam Gopal Das (Maksim Varfolomeev), who wrote and directed the 40-minute film Reconnection with his wife Vijaya Radhika Dasi (Olga Avramenko). The film has won an Award of Excellence from the Best Shorts Competition, whose previous winners have gone on to win Oscars and Emmys.
It's a hot season in Vrindavan and almost every day a dust storm comes. Sometimes it turns into a thunderstorm with spectacular lightnings. Short rain brings the heat down some and gives a long-waited relief. A video by Vrindavan Experience.
Chandan Yatra at Krishna-Balaram temple in Vrindavan. Chandan Yatra is a festival which is being celebrated during the hot season. Temple Deities all over the India are being covered with sandal wood paste known for it's cooling effect. This video brings you both the festival atmosphere and the sneak view of the preparation behind the altar curtain. For more videos visit us at www.VrindavanExperience.com
100,000 visitors from all over the world took part in Krishna Balarama Mandir’s week-long 40th anniversary celebrations from March 23rd to 29th in Vrindavana, India. The mood of the festival was both epic and sweet, recalling Srila Prabhupada’s ten-year struggle to establish a temple in the sacred village where Lord Krishna grew up, and his victory upon Krishna Balarama Mandir’s grand opening festival in April 1975.
The Indian government has finally agreed to restore the Yamuna’s ecological flow through several steps demanded by protestors, beginning with bringing the sacred river under the Environment Protection Act within two to three months. The move is a huge victory for the Free Yamuna Campaign of Braj (the land of Lord Krishna’s pastimes), which has been fighting for years now to restore the beleaguered river.
100,000 people are expected to participate in a third march protesting the condition of the sacred river Yamuna this spring – and this time, organizers say, they will not budge or negotiate with the government. Two previous marches in 2011 and 2013 yielded some results -- for instance, the government agreed to construct a sewage canal to stop Delhi drains discharging pollutants and sewer waste into the river.