alxindia: August 2026

These are the last few Penukonda days... in a small photo essay for those of you who'd been following our power journey and Guru Purnima in Penukonda tour this year.

A Maha Vishnu power journey meeting, in my room in Penukonda

Our travel group helped prepare the thousands of lotus petals that were used in this lotus petal abishek process, to both the Mahisasura Mardini Ma (aka Kanaka Durga) statue/murthi in the Dwarakamai and to Sri Kaleshwar's samadhi (tomb).

Our Maha Vishnu group added a special 1008 flowers to the process, on behalf of our travel group AND our virtual travel group friends, to get that special blessing for all.

We were stationed inside the Dwarakamai throughout the whole ashram process (every one of the 170 attendees had 18 lotus flowers' worth of petals to put on these two holy beings, Mother and Sri Kaleshwar).

Guru Purnima Day 2026 in Penukonda

The Shirdi Sai Baba murthi on his big day, after a milk bath (abishek)

Guru Purnima fire homa

The full moon over Penukonda

Dwarakamai -- the central holy building - on Guru Purnima

The next day, our Maha Vishnu group and a couple of friends who came along for the fun went to the top of the Penukonda mountain, to meditate.

Later that day, we braved the rocky thorn-bush-filled paths winding up along a lower part of the Penukonda mountain, to experience the beauty of the cave that Sri Kaleshwar meditated in, a lot, for a few years, before he began to construct the Penukonda ashram (visible from the cave, below, at ground level, to the NE from his cave).

Our Penukonda amazing last tour day finished up with yet ANOTHER high shakti experience... a visit to and meditation in the ancient Jain temple in Penukonda village. In this temple, there is a 5000-year-old sculpture of Gomateshwara (the Jain priests in the temple call him something different) that Sri Kaleshwar told us HE himself sculpted, 5000 years ago. (The Jains think the statue is like 1600 years old, at most.)

It's an amazingly high-powered, deeply Vishnu-feeling figure in that stone... a green stone that no one seems to be able to identify. (My sense is that it's not from this planet at all.)

The whole temple is vibrating with the divine energy, really strongly. We had a superb meditation in there, after taking the arathi (flame ceremony) from the pujari (priest) on duty.