Friday, September 12th, 2008

Friday, Sept. 12/08 - Dungarvan, Ireland

Fairly recently paved was route 676 for Tour-de-France competitors a year ago, so a local person told me. The road is indeed mighty smooth and it led Igor and I to the town of Dungarvan where we caught our first glimpse of the Celtic sea and the Atlantic, now being on Ireland’s southern coast.

Weather was most co-operative and for the first day really. People are out and about. The back roads towards Youghal were our choice. Ananta and Premarnava navigated our route and while doing so knocked on doors of the country homes hoping to interest people in the soul’s transmigration and to read about it in the books of Srila Prabhupada which they had available. One man took interest and acquired a Bhagavad-Gita, as his belief in reincarnation became confirmed upon having a powerful deja-vu experience in the past. Another man inspecting his soon-to-be completed home was a writer for human rights issues. He was delighted to purchase the Bhagavad-Gita as he was open-minded and familiar with the ancient text.

Igor and I had interactions with people as well. It started over dogs. One black Labrador followed us for kilometre after kilometre. He responded well to the name we gave him, Vamana, named after the walking incarnation, who we were honouring today, by the Vedic lunar calendar. The owner eventually drove to find him and hence we made another friend. I had similar occurrences like this in Canada. Make a dog a friend on the road and the master will follow. There are pilgrim’s stories like this found in the account of the lives of pilgrims like Sivananda Sen in medieval Bengal who gave help to apparent stray dogs.

After Vamana, the dog, was reclaimed another dog showed up and a similar thing occurred.

The view and interview at Dungarvan were spectacular. Paul Mooney from the Dungarvan People became quite inspired, I would say, about walking while meditating over mantras. When he saw the beads he said, “It’s like a rosary.”
“Yes it is. It is much like the rosary.”

47 Km