Radhanath Swami
The Chicago-born teenager who hitchhiked overland to India in 1970 and became one of the most beloved living teachers of bhakti — guiding Mumbai's Radha Gopinath community and telling his story in the modern classic The Journey Home.
Life & Legacy
Born Richard Slavin in Chicago in 1950, Radhanath Swami left home at nineteen and made his way overland — across Europe, through Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan — to India, on a spiritual search he would later recount in his autobiography The Journey Home. After years of wandering among yogis, monks, and sadhus, living in caves and on riverbanks, he met Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, and accepted him as his guru, receiving initiation in 1973. In 1982 he entered the renounced order of sannyasa.
Since 1986 he has guided the Radha Gopinath Mandir community in the Chowpatty district of Mumbai, which under his care grew into one of the most vibrant bhakti communities in the world — known for its daily kirtan and for large-scale service projects including the Bhaktivedanta Hospital and the midday-meal programs that feed hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. His memoir The Journey Home (2008) and its sequel The Journey Within (2016) carried the path of bhakti to readers far beyond the temple, and his gentle, story-rich talks and kirtans draw audiences across the world.
