Early last week I had a telephone call from His Holiness Giridhari Swami asking me if I was able to assist in overseeing the activities of the yatra. Both of us have known each other for a several decades, so I agreed since I saw this as a service to the devotees serving under the spiritual guidance of Maharaj.

I flew into Manila from Hong Kong on a Cebu Pacific flight packed with Filipinos returning home for Xmas. At the airport I was met by Bharat Prabhu whom I had last seen several years ago in Cebu. Bharat is a wonderful devotee who loves to serve the devotees and had come out late in the night to meet me and to take me home to accomodate this soul for the next 5 days.

The Philippines are packed up with people and Metro Manila is no exception housing close to 15 million people. The traffic seems to be horrendous day and night and that evening was no different. Arriving at the 'hacienda' I quickly settled into a routine of morning program, meeting devotees, and working through a variety of issues that seem to duplicate themselves around the ISKCON world.

ISKCON has two centres in the country; one in Makati which is the main business district and in Alaminos which is approx 2 hrs south of the capital. A range of photos is available under the gallery link on the left.