What an Year it was 💕😇

I surpassed myself in my travels in 2019 😇

5 Continents

4 New Countries : Guatemala, Nepal, Canada and Turkey. All were so awesome and worth visiting again.

Such beautiful places, even more beautiful friends and so much of love from all around. Can’t thank God enough for all His grace 💕🙏💕

Wherever I find love that is my home 💕💕

LOS ANGELES: Peace Love Nature – December 2018 and January 2019

Ten days in LA were spent in the SRF Mother Center and three days at SRF retreat, Lake Shrine👇

18 Joyous days in the Country of Eternal Spring- Guatemala 💕💕👇

And my trip around the world was rounded up beautifully with 8 days in end January in Brisbane with my dear niece, Uma 💕🤗💕👇

After visiting North America, Central America and Australia in the beginning of the year; April found me in me beautiful neighbouring country – Nepal; with my beautiful niece, Sabrina and her loving family. Whole of Nepal is so scenic💕💕👇

And then back home on the beaches of Goa with my niece, Kankana and her son 💕🤗👇

The end of the year found me back again in North America, but this time on the East Coast. It has been a dream to watch the fall colours and I got so much more 💕💕👇

The last country to visit was Turkey. Visiting Istanbul had been in my wish list for almost 50 years 😊👇

4 Months 4 Continents 💕

I have always been traveling a lot, but last year I had promised myself to travel to at least one new country and one new location in India every year. We are less than 4 months into the year and I have already been to 2 new countries and 4 continents 😊❤️🙏

Around the World with Love

Guatemala in Central America seems to be a little stronger economy than India but just like India in many ways. Beautiful. More of a developing country.

Los Angeles in North America – a dream city, very modern and well developed and affluent.

Brisbane, Australia- a beautiful and good paced city. Modern and affluent. Very livable.

Nepal in Asia – a beautiful country, lesser developed than India.

On the look of it there doesn’t seem any common ground in these 4 places around the world. Different levels of standards of living; different languages- English, Spanish and Nepalese; different food, different looks 😂😇

But as I wrote in one of my earlier blogs – people are essentially same all over the world. I had the good fortune to meet and live with amazing and loving people every where ❤️🙏❤️ and I loved all the countries. And though every country was so different Nature was beautiful everywhere. Different but divine ❤️

Love in Nepal😊❤️

NEPAL 🇳🇵

More of Love 💕 Brisbane 1

BRISBANE- AUSTRALIA 🇦🇺

Love in Los Angeles ❤️

LOS ANGELES- USA 🇺🇸

Love in Guatemala ❤️ – 1

GUATEMALA 🇬🇹

Peace ❤️ Love 💕— SRF Lake Shrine Retreat💕🙏

I was back in LA after spending 18 amazing days in Guatemala!

Christmas in Los Angeles ❤️

Love in Los Angeles ❤️

More peace. More love 💕

It has been my dream to be able to spend a few days at our Lake Shrine Retreat. Simply divine. The love and care and hospitality of the staff and volunteers is incomparable. And such uplifting vibrations! God willing shall spend more time here in my next visit.

Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine is a Temple, a Shrine, and a Meditation Garden offering people from around the world a quiet oasis for meditation, prayer, and receiving the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. All are welcome here, not only devotees 🙏

For those who love silence and nature it is an amazing retreat to spend a days or weeks. Simple yet beautiful rooms. With every little detail taken care off. All rooms face Pacific Ocean. Wholesome, pure, tasty vegetarian meals. A chapel for individual meditations and a study room to sit and read. Conducted meditations are in the main temple.

We were 11 of us there in the retreat. Most others looked like a Spanish group. Another two ladies used to share the dining table, where I normally sat. We used to smile at each other but never talked. Retreants normally remain silent. On my last day there it was raining and I was wondering how to go to the temple for morning meditation. One of these ladies had an umbrella and offered to share it with me. It turned out that both these ladies too were from India (Mumbai only😊) and thought I was part of the Spanish group 😊 We were together for three days, from the same city – Mumbai and kept thinking that the other person was from Spain 😇

Lake Shrine is dedicated to all religions 🙏🙏

Gandhi Memorial – has Gandhiji’s ashes 🙏

With a couple visiting from India, with their children living in the US and Canada. In the center is Pillaar, the ever smiling and ever helpful supervisor at Lake Shrine😊😍

Later I was able to accompany this family to SRF Hollywood Temple too. They were happy and grateful. A day well spent 😊❤️🙏

Love in Los Angeles ❤️

My trip around the world started from my landing in LA on the 21st of December 2018. Around the World with Love

Well begun is half done ❤️😊❤️

I had come to LA last in August 2014 to attend the SRF World Convocation. At that time I had stayed in our Encinitas Retreat. Simply divine❤️ and during the Convocation had visited our Mother Center and Lake Shrine retreat. Had promised myself at that time to come and spend more time in both these places again💕

I had booked myself in the same hotel in down town LA, where I had stayed 4 years back – Biltmore Millennium; but at the last moment decided to stay with fellow devotees. And am so glad and so blessed that I did so. They not only opened their doors to me but their hearts as well ❤️👏

It was like being home. Being loved and cared. Thank you so much Joanna and Dallas; Donna, John, Mel and Padmini for all the love and understanding👏🤗❤️

Joanna and Dallas and their two beautiful sons had gone to their family in San Diego for Christmas and I was alone at their home. Had a beautiful walk in the morning and got a little taste of the fall colours too🍂🍁❤️🙏 Reached home and pulled a back muscle as I sat down to untie my shoes😝

Just imagine – the beginning of my long trip around the world and the very first day I pull a back muscle and am far far away from home and home alone 😝 And this was the beginning of the love and care I got all through the trip. Can’t thank God enough🙏🙏 Because it is His love only which comes through His children❤️🙏

I called up Pallavi, my life line in the US, and Joanna. Joanna is so organised – she told me the exact spot where the balm was lying in the house😎 And Pallavi ordered some medicine and hot and icy packs for me for delivery within two hours. Love you so much Pallavi. And I was up and about in no time. I think it was Love that healed me faster than the medication 😊❤️😊

Mother Center is divinely beautiful and serene ❤️❤️ Guruji (Paramahansa Yogananda) had said that he has left behind maximum holy vibrations at Mother Center in LA and YSS Ranchi Ashram and that is so true. One doesn’t want to come out of this place. Pure bliss❤️ Went there every day that I was in LA.

One day when I took an Uber to go to the Mother Center I started to talk to the driver. I was amazed how well read and aware he was. We talked about how our thoughts create our reality and that outside world is a reflection of what is inside us😇 And I told him about Guruji and his teachings and the SRF International Head Quarters at the Mother Center. When we reached there he parked his cab, came inside with me and took the introductory literature to start with the Home Study lessons 😊🙏

And he hugged me and thanked me and said he didn’t know such a divine place existed in LA ❤️❤️

God is Love🙏❤️🙏

Guruji is Love ❤️🙏❤️

Love is all there is ❤️❤️❤️

God is Love

“Wherever we have friends that’s your country, and wherever you receive love is your home”. Dalai Lama

 

It is so true.

Had realised it and lived it for years. But my recent trip to LA, Guatemala and Brisbane was so divine and so filled with love and care from everyone that this truth has now been irrevocably embedded in my heart.

 

God is Love

and

Love is all there is

❤️❤️❤️❤️

 

Around the World with Love 💕

It all started on that beautiful Sunday morning, the 14th of January 2018. Looking back, our meeting was divinely ordained.
I shouldn’t have been in Mumbai that day. And if yes, certainly not in Gordon House Hotel in South Mumbai.
And Clau and Blanca told me, when I met them in Guatemala a year later, that they too had made the change of the hotel at the last moment.
And again it was a coincidence, that we were at the same long table at the same time for our breakfast.

Clau is a shy young lady, not like the extrovert Blanca! And when we met, a year after our first contact in that boutique hotel in Mumbai, Clau told me that she had heard a voice in her head telling her to talk to me!! She had said hello and told me that I had very peaceful aura about me! And then she asked me what do I do? And I told her about our YSS (Yogoda Satsanga Society of India) cruise the previous evening, my Guru – Paramahansa Yogananda, and the Autobiography of a Yogi. And that was the beginning of a beautiful and loving friendship, which eventually led to my visiting Guatemala a year later.

First and last I had heard of Guatemala, before this, was in my childhood when I used to collect stamps, about 55 years ago!! I love traveling but visiting this country wasn’t even at the bottom of my wish list. It just wasn’t there! But it happened. And I am so glad that it did.

It was such a beautiful and enriching trip around the world. Pune->Mumbai->Los Angeles->Guatemala->Los Angeles-Brisbane->Mumbai->Pune. Three very long flights and a very long stop over in Auckland. Every place I visited and every person I met was so different from the other. Australia and Guatemala are poles apart! 180 degrees!! And Los Angeles another story of divine love and friendship altogether!! But this trip strengthened the world view I have had for many years now. And that is:

People, at the core of their hearts, are same all over the world. Everyone wants some love, some respect, some appreciation…..every one wants to be happy …..they have similar fears, worries and insecurities…… However different people may look and whatever language they may speak; and whatever may be their food habits and lifestyles; essentially they are all same.