ISKCON Mayapur – Chandrodaya Mandir & Vedic Planetarium

Mayapur, at the holy confluence of the Ganga and Jalangi rivers in Nadia district, is the world headquarters of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) and one of the fastest-growing pilgrimage destinations in India. It is revered as the birthplace of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), the golden avatar who spread the Hare Krishna sankirtan movement across India. Srila Prabhupada, ISKCON's founder, selected this sacred land in the early 1970s to build a spiritual city. The Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir campus today houses the magnificent deities of Sri Sri Radha-Madhava with the Ashta-Sakhis, the Panchatattva deities — among the largest in the world — and Srila Prabhupada's Pushpa Samadhi Mandir, a grand domed memorial with a museum on his life. The centrepiece is the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium (TOVP) — one of the largest temple structures on earth, its immense blue dome rising about 340 feet over the Ganga plain, visible from miles away. Inside, exhibits present Vedic cosmology beneath a worship hall designed to hold ten thousand devotees. The campus includes gardens, a goshala (cow sanctuary), prasadam halls serving thousands daily, boat ghats on the Ganga and comfortable pilgrim guesthouses. The morning and evening aartis with hundreds of devotees chanting are unforgettable. The grandest time to visit is Gaura Purnima (February–March), Sri Chaitanya's birth anniversary, when devotees from over a hundred countries fill Mayapur; the Navadwip Mandala Parikrama in the preceding week circles the nine islands of the holy dham on foot.