Sahyadri Sri Krishna Balarama Kshetra — a Vedic farm community in the Western Ghats, since 2006.
In 2006, His Holiness Bhakti Raghava Swami Maharaj — ISKCON Minister for the Daiva Varnasrama Ministry — returned to India after years of preaching abroad. He carried with him a singular conviction: that Srila Prabhupada's vision of simple living and high thinking would never be realised in city temples alone. It needed land. It needed cows. It needed villages.
He found that land here, in the green folds of Hebri — three kilometres from the village, thirty from Udupi, on the edge of the Agumbe rainforest. A piece of the Western Ghats so quiet that you can hear the bells of the goshala from a kilometre away.
From those first acres has grown Sahyadri Sri Krishna Balarama Kshetra — a working farm, a teaching ashram, a sanctuary for cows, and a home to a small community of devotees and the village families who have grown alongside it.
Cow protection is not just a practice — it is a sacred duty,
carried out with deep love and devotion.
To recreate a Vedic culture of village community — where cow, land, and human are bound together in seva, where children grow up hearing kirtan, and where prasadam is shared with anyone who walks in.
To build a self-sustainable Krishna-conscious community — protecting the indigenous Malenadu Gidda cow, farming without chemicals, distributing Srila Prabhupada's books, and educating seekers in the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita.
Hebri sits on the edge of the Agumbe rainforest — one of the wettest places in peninsular India, called the "Cherrapunji of the South." Monsoons here are generous. Mornings are misty. The soil is red, the air is clean, and the silence is broken only by birdsong and the distant call of langurs.
Our 14 acres of grazing pasture, 1.5 acres of Super Napier green grass cultivation, and the surrounding groves of jackfruit, coconut, cashew, and almond — all of it sits inside this living, breathing landscape.
Hebri is still being built — brick by brick, season by season. Here is what we are working towards.
Replacing the tarpaulin shelters with a full-fledged, weather-proof cow shelter and dairy.
A worthy ashram for Sri Krishna Balarama and the growing community of devotees.
A traditional school for the children of Hebri — Sanskrit, scripture, farming, and dharma.
A dedicated space for Bhagavatam classes, kirtan, and weekend retreats.
More land under chemical-free cultivation, more produce shared with the local community.
Simple, sattvic guest housing for retreat participants and pilgrims.
Every meal of hay, every Bhagavatam set distributed, every weekend programme — happens because of devotees and well-wishers like you.
