One of the largest Hindu gatherings outside India is expected to attract 70,000 people to Hertfordshire.

Celebrations marking the 5,000-year-old festival of Janmashtami are taking place at the Bhaktivedanta Manor Hare Krishna temple in Watford.

This photo essay entitled 'Spring of Love' attempts to capture the festive celebration of Holi around the sacred Vrindavana area in India. Images by Pavel Tomanec (Paramdhamananda Dasa).

The high school students of Bhaktivedanta Gurukula and International School in Vrindavan were in ecstasy when the Krishna Balarama Temple management asked them to decorate the swing for the Divine Couple Sri Sri Radheshyamasundar on the first day of Jhulan Yatra. The four day swing festival culminated on Balarama Purnima, Lord Balarama's Appearance Day.

Kyrgyzstan is continuing a crackdown on people exercising their freedom of
religion or belief, Forum 18 News Service has found. Communities of
Protestant Christians, Hare Krishna devotees and Ahamdiya Muslims have all
been ordered by the authorities to stop meeting for worship, in some cases
the orders having been originally issued in 2007.

Thousands of devotees gathered at the ISKCON temple in West Bengal's Nadia district as Janmashtami, the festival that marks the birth of Lord Krishna, was celebrated.

On Thursday midnight, the exact time when Krishna was born, people prayed at temples, and thousands gathered to sing hymns in the festive atmosphere of Nadia district's Mayapur, housing the global headquarters of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness).

Pune - A strong believer in Lord Hanuman, businessman Amar Ludhrani visits Hanuman Temple in Camp every Saturday. It is a practice that hasn’t taken a backseat, even when he has the most important business meeting lined up. But with the compounding swine flu scare, Ludhrani doubts that he might have to break the practice he has followed for last 15 years, without fail.

The drive from Cleveland to Wheeling, West Virginia is a beautiful juxtaposition of Ohio forests with the industry that supports Ohio. As you live the city behind you, your trip will take you past small towns and awe-inspiring factories, like the First Energy plant just outside of Steubenville, which spans the roadway and creates a tunnel.

Jaipur, India – Rajmata Gayatri Devi—formerly the Queen of Jaipur, a member of India’s Parliament, and a celebrity christened one of the most beautiful women in the world—passed away on Wednesday, July 29 at the age of 90. For devotees of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), she will be especially remembered for her hospitality to the early Hare Krishna devotees visiting Jaipur and her gift of large Radha Krishna deities to A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, ISKCON’s founder-acarya.

This year, as the Mayapur Institute for Higher Education and Training (MIHET) enters its tenth year, staff and students alike look back on a decade of learning, inspiration and, of course, hard work.

The seed for the project was planted between the years of 1988 and 1996, when American-born Janmastami Dasa traveled to India on seven different occasions to attend courses at the Vrindavana Institute for Higher Education (VIHE).

This August 1st to 5th, youth at ISKCON’s headquarters in Mayapur, India organized Julan-Yatra, a traditional swing festival described by the poet Kavi Karnapura as “The perfect object of meditation for those desiring a taste of devotion.”

ISKCON of Bali, Indonesia hosted its first ever Varnashrama Global Mission seminar this August first and second. Varnashrama, a traditional Vedic social structure of natural vocations and life stages, is often confused with the birth-based caste system—which Vaishnavas consider to be a misapplication of the original ancient system.

To the delight of many devotees living in rural ISKCON communities, the GBC (ISKCON’s administrative authority) recently set guidelines instructing all GBC members to spend 10% of their time boosting farm projects.

Do any GBCs really spend 10% of their time promoting rural projects? Are the guidelines making any measurable change?

LOS ANGELES, CA - The Temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) at Watseka Avenue here, just off Venice Blvd. conducted its 33rd Annual Festival of the Chariots Parade on August 2, which started at the Santa Monica Civic auditorium and ended on Venice Beach.

A new environmentally-friendly farm complex will be the star attraction in Aldenham next weekend for a celebration of the Hindu festival of Janmashtami.

More than 65,000 people are expected to visit Bhaktivedanta Manor in Hilfield Avenue to celebrate the birth of the Hindu god Lord Krishna.

Hearing news of the passing of Srimati Rajmata Gayatri Devi, the famous Queen of Jaipur, made me think of the significant contribution Gayatri Devi made to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. In 1972 Gayatri Devi hosted His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada and an entourage of ISKCON devotees at the King of Jaipur's property, which is also the estate compound where the famous Sri Govindaji, the beloved deity of Srila Rupa Goswami, resides. It was during that stay, which Srila Prabhupada utilized for a Krishna Consciousness festival program for the public, that Rajmata Gayatri Devi magnanimously gave the transcendental gift of Sri Sri Radha Govinda murtis to Srila Prabhupada.

Following a spiritual lifestyle requires strength. Strength to hold off the advances of a world intent on selling you products and life choices you don’t need. Strength to aspire for goals of the spirit, outside this body of flesh and blood that we inhabit. Strength to aim for a spiritual destination despite the seeming pleasures of this world. It’s hard. You know it, and I know it. Anyone who is trying to live a spiritual life knows it.

The Hare Krishnas will finally get a long-sought-after temple if Oleg Mitvol, former environmental crusader and now prefect of the Northern Administrative District, gets his way.

At a meeting with Dzhkha Sandzhit, the president of the Association of Indians in Russia, Mitvol said that a Hare Krishna temple would be built in the Molzhaninovsky area, 10 kilometres outside the Moscow Ring Road in the north of Moscow.

On Saturday, July 25, 2009; ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) Berkeley Hare Krishna Temple celebrated Ratha Yatra (Festival of Chariots) in the Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. ISKCON of Silicon Valley (ISV) located in San Jose collaborated in the celebration.

The Ratha Yatra with three chariots of Lord Jagannatha, Lady Subhadra, and Lord Baladeva respectively started in the afternoon from Transverse and JFK Drive. The colorful chariots were gloriously decorated.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- On farms across West Virginia, 204,000 beef cattle now await slaughter.

But at the International Society for Cow Protection's 168-acre hillside farm in Marshall County, cattle are treated far differently from those that are headed to slaughterhouses and onto plates.

On July 18 Uttama Chaitanya Dasa, the temple president of ISKCON Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, was attending a two-day seminar hosted by ISKCON’s Congregational Development Ministry. He had complained of some heart pain earlier that day but otherwise seemed fine. As devotees playing futsal (indoor soccer) after the seminar to relax, however, he collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital with devotees chanting Hare Krishna in his ear, but passed away at 5pm.