Scenes from America’s Taj Mahal

Surveillance signs say Krishna is Watching. A life-sized plastic elephant sleeps in the parking lot.

Big Wheeling Creek Road runs through the hills of West Virginia and dips straight into the uncanny valley where a pair of thirty-foot gurus dance against the naked winter trees. Maybe it’s their bug-eyed grins, flowy arms, or brightly painted skin — something about these statues bothers the soul. They’re too lifelike. Too chipper. And they’ve deeply complicated my ideas about West Virginia.

There’s a massive gilded palace that looks like a postcard from a distant time and land. A life-sized plastic elephant sleeps in the parking lot. Gazebos surround a man-made pond where a sign warns about the possibility of violent swan attacks. Surveillance signs say Krishna is Watching. This is the campus of New Vrindaban, once the site of America’s largest Hare Krishna community.

Since its founding in 1966 in New York City, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness has become comic shorthand for the wild-eyed ideologue you find in the margins of subway stations, airports, and crowded streets. Or rather, the ones who find you. The street preacher and proselytizer, the faith-dealers armed with trinkets, literature, and impossible questions. Do you know the truth? Have you been…