Every Sunday a colorful crowd gathers at the Krishna temple in Avchala, in uptown Tbilisi. Praying, listening to lectures, and exchanging ideas is a kaleidoscope of ethnicities, and among them many are Azerbaijanis.

Fikrat Nasraddinzadeh was 20, when he converted to the Krishna Consciousness from Islam, the dominant faith in his native Azerbaijan. In 2013 the 52-year-old moved with his wife from Baku to Tbilisi to run his construction-related business. Once in Georgia he started to attend the Tbilisi temple. Today he is one of the Sunday lecturers, a point of reference for newcomers.

Reyhan Eylazova is was born and raised in Gombori, a village in eastern Georgia. Her spiritual quest started in her teens and she found her inner peace when she approached the Krishna Consciousness. Eylazova, now 49, married but it took some time before both her family and her husband’s accepted her religious choice.

Despite their differences, both Nasraddinzadeh and Eylazova share the vision that only the Khrisha’s teachings could provide the answers to the life questions that they were searching for years for.