LA Ratha Yatra

Jahnava Nitai Das · August 14, 2002

I stumbled across an outsiders website who happened to see the Ratha Yatra and post an article on his website. Here is what he said:

"I stumbled onto the parade, the "Festival of Chariots," which was billed to me as a traditional Indian parade. But I didn't see too many Indians, which is puzzling considering this city's ethnic makeup. It was almost exclusively Whitey. Every one of the "commanders," the guys with megaphones leading the Hare Krishna chants, was white. All the guys (gurus?) riding on the floats were Indian, however. Update: I just saw a flyer. The festival of chariots was put on by the San Francisco Society for Krishna Conciousness."

You can visit his site and see some of the pictures he took:

http://www.honan.net/

Here is a funny picture, which he captioned as "Krishna Family". It's funny because the people have no connection to each other, but he obviously concluded it was a father, mother and daughter. That's Hanumat Preshaka Swami on the right.

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JRdd · August 14, 2002

That was really great being able to see those photos so soon after SF Rathayatra already. I was there in spirit. Here, I distributed barat prasad with tomato sauce, all organic, to many happy people in Mt Shasta's city park. Just sat at a picnic table where everyone gathers their water from the spring, and people just came over. I was also blessed to have visits the next day from devotees on their way back up to Seattle and Montreal from that festival. I understand that very few "oldtime" devotees were there this year.