By Parasuram das
1990 was the first Trip to Tipp, it was also the year that Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Germany was re-unified after the fall of the Berlin Wall and, away from the headlines, a computer nerd called Tim Berners-Lee was registering something called the World Wide Web. I was oblivious to all of this, I was busy chasing horses, tents and carts in an attempt to walk from Belfast to Moscow, the first traditional Padayatra outside of India in an attempt to celebrate Srila Prabhupada’s Centennial, in the association of HG Tribhuvanath Prabhu, and Giri Dhari prabhu, and a glorious crew of fearless, untameable devotees.
By July 1990 we came to Tipperary for the “Trip to Tipp”, I had warned the devotees to stop asking how far it was, as that would just trigger off the compulsory song ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’.
The festival was wild, you can’t imagine, thousands of young Irish lads fuelled up on beer, with a serious addition to ‘ceol, craic agus damhsa’ translates as wild song, fun and dancing.
On Harinam we would be showered in beer, (even went into my mouth eeeeer) and the Kirtan in the tent went on all night, they wouldn’t let us stop. They kept calling Hari Hari Hari until we started up again. Gangs of youths were climbing the tent and sliding off, even a gun was pulled in the tent.
Tribhuvanath Prabhu was in his element, rocking the tent with the Holy Name. He gave me a very valuable instruction at this festival that I took to heart as my life and soul, “put more butter in the kitchari, Krishna likes butter”!
So the festival got resurrected again, people remembered those wild times with the “Harry Harrys’ and we were invited to kick off the festival on the 20th of September.
Praghosa Prabhu our loveable GBC, (who was also part of the Trip to Tipp team in the 90’s), Tribhuvanath Prabhu’s Festival Team and the Krishna Castle Team came together for a deadly (Irish slang for super) weekend.
Enjoy the video:
Comments