Everyone directed Prabhupada towards the vyasasana and he looked at it, then he looked around

Ramadevi dasi: Everyone directed Prabhupada towards the vyasasana and he looked at it, then he looked around, and then he just shook his head a little and started to walk. Then when everyone realized that Prabhupada was going to walk in front of the cart with everybody else, it was like a wave went through the devotees as they heard that this was happening, everyone started to dance. It was quite amazing that there was this seemingly very small old man in the middle of these tall, young, strong Western men, and he was completely directing them. Just with a flick of his finger they would lift off the ground and dance and spin and do whatever. The number of mridangas that were being played and the vigor that they were being played with, it wasn't that the kirtan was particularly fast.

But the way everyone was playing the mridangas, their hearts were in their hands the way they were playing them to please Prabhupada with the kirtan. From time to time, he would actually start dancing, jumping off the ground himself with his arms raised. And when that happened, the devotees just went wild and it was as if we were flying. There was no ground beneath our feet, there was no time, no space, no nothing. There was just pure joy and happiness and Prabhupada.

At some points when he would look at Lord Jagannatha, it was the face of a man in love, the way he looked at Jagannatha. Sometimes the Rathayatra cart would fall behind the kirtan party by quite a distance. So Prabhupada would stop the kirtan party in one spot and wait for the cart to catch up. He would sometimes raise his hands as if he was beckoning to Lord Jagannatha to come; and once the cart caught right up to the party, then he'd move on again. The walk from Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square, if you were just walking it without dancing or whatever, it takes at least a half an hour just to walk normally. But the Rathayatra procession lasts for about two-and-a-half hours.