By Madhava Smullen for ISKCON News on 13 Jun 2013
A crowd begins to gather in Frankfurt
A brand new outreach project is spreading Krishna consciousness around Germany with joy, color and enthusiasm that’s simply infectious.
All six core members of Der Fahrende Tempel—or The Traveling Temple—are celibate monks called brahmacharis. Seven years back, they started ISKCON Leipzig, which quickly became the most active temple in Germany with lots of outreach, book distribution, and festivals. Yet as the temple grew and became a more family-centered project, the brahmacharis decided they needed to hit the road for more adventure.
Visionary Sadbhuja Das and fellow preachers Dvarakadish, Citta Hari, Jaya Nitai, Godruma, and Bhakta Viktor first relocated to the Bavarian forest community of Simhachalam. There, in January of this year, they purchased a 1971 motorhome and set to work transforming it into a “Sankirtan Bus.”
A morning program on the bus
“We put in an altar for Sri Sri Gaura Nitai, bigger windows, a stove, solar panels on top, and a big sound system, with amplifiers,” says Sadbhuja. “We also added a platform on the front that can sleep five people as well as the seven or eight inside. For programs, we can have up to fifteen people, maybe twenty.”
For the past four weeks, The Traveling Temple has been on tour around Germany and other nearby countries with a plan to continue through the summer until August.
The core six brahmacharis, sometimes joined by other local or traveling devotees, began their journey in Radhadesh, Belgium, where they presented their Sankirtan Bus to their guru Kadamba Kanana Swami on the occasion of his birthday.