An opulent lunch Prasadam awaits us: really wonderful festival style varieties of sabji, dhal, rice, and sweets. For the afternoon and the next morning no plans are made. The devotees may spend the time as they wish until it is time to get together for the Ratha Yatra festival next afternoon....

8th July 2005 - Jagannath Ratha Yatra, Puri, 3rd Day

This is an experience I will never forget, especially because of the circumstances I find myself in, quite unexpectedly.

Somehow or other, all the Westerners have some sickness or ailment in the time we are in Puri, so I am pleased to be 'proud' and able to help them out - but Krishna tolerates no pride, and the day of the Ratha Yatra I wake up with terrible stomach problems. The night before we took Jagannath Prasadam (His first 'proper' meals since He has been 'ill') so I guess the purification process is taking place!

I feel very weak and not sure my stomach will be pacified in time. I think of nothing except lying where I have been all day, closing my eyes, and praying to Srila Gurudev for some mercy. "Alone I am nothing, I have no strength by myself. Only by Your divine mercy may I go see Lord Jagannath, for whom I have been yearning for so long...."

At around 1:30pm, I go to the nat mandir, and as I stand there while the kirttan begins, my knees feel like jelly from fasting, dehydration and the stress my body has just undergone. I feel like I will not survive the crowd, but undeterred I follow, one footstep after another, and as we walk, the blood flows into my head and I feel a little better. However I still don't have enough energy to chant. Still I am grateful that I can somehow go and see Lord Jagannath's lotus eyes and sweet smiling face.

To have come so close and miss it is not even a consideration. I joke that if I will have to be carried away on a stretcher, then I will admit defeat. Although my body is battered, I have no fever and my psychological state is fine! Gurudev must have heard my prayers though, because from this moment, my stomach problem subsides completely and I only have to deal with a little weakness.

We take all back streets to the Jagannath Temple, on to about half-way towards Gundicha. It appears quite manageable so far, until we take a side-street out into the main road, right into the midst of it, a plunge into a sea of people. Us women are more or less ushered towards the middle of the group, with the men protecting as we move like a shoal of fish protecting each other in that immense sea.