Prepared to go wherever...

Mukunda Dasa had located the storefront and apartment at 26 Second Avenue for Srila Prabhupada, and now he wrote that he and several others had rented a storefront on Frederick Street in the Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, and were converting it into a temple. Because Srila Prabhupada had come to the West on the order of his spiritual master to preach bhakti-yoga, devotion to Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he was prepared to go wherever Krishna led him.

Srila Prabhupada Lilamrita, the official biography of Srila Prabhupada, recounts his departure from 26 Second Avenue on January 17:

He waited in his room while the boys arranged for a car to take him to the airport. The day was gray and cold, and steam hissed in the radiators. He would take only a suitcase - mostly clothes and some books. He checked the closet to see that his manuscripts were in order. Kirtanananda would take care of his things in his apartment. He sat down at his desk where, for more than six months, he had sat so many times, working for hours at the typewriter preparing his Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam, and where he had sat talking to so many guests and to his followers. But today he would not be talking with friends or typing a manuscript, but waiting a last few minutes alone before his departure.

This was a nice place, 26 Second Avenue. He had started here. The boys would keep it up. Some of them were donating their salaries. It was a start.

Prabhupada looked at his watch. He put on his tweed winter coat and his hat and shoes, put his right hand in his bead bag, and continued chanting. He walked out of the apartment, down the stairs, and through the courtyard, which was now frozen and still, its trees starkly bare without a single leaf remaining. And he left the storefront behind.

He left, even while Brahmananda, Rupanuga, and Satsvarupa were at their office jobs. There was not even a farewell scene or a farewell address.