There are many festivals in India, but one of the bigger ones, especially for the Northern part of the country is Holi - the festival of colors and love.
To celebrate the arrival of spring people use this as a free-for-all festival of colors, where people smear each other with colors and drench each other. Anyone and everyone is fair game, friend or stranger, rich or poor, man or woman, children and elders. The frolic and fight with colors occurs in the open streets, open parks, outside temples and buildings. Groups carry drums and other musical instruments and go from place to place, sing and dance.
To really experience this festival we decided to celebrate in Jaipur. And celebrate we did! Oh my goodness, what a fun and joyful festival this is! We found a great venue, mostly set up for tourists but who cares, where the colors provided were all natural and thus at the end of the day easier removable.
For days after the event you could very easily pick out the people who celebrated Holi in other places; the sometimes not so natural dyes left their marks for many many days. Orange hair? Purple skin? Yup, must be Holi.
Arriving back at the hotel after the celebrations we were awaited with a bucket of water. No entrance to the hotel until most of the colors were washed off... Oh well, you can't really blame them, but what a awesome experience!
To celebrate the arrival of spring people use this as a free-for-all festival of colors, where people smear each other with colors and drench each other. Anyone and everyone is fair game, friend or stranger, rich or poor, man or woman, children and elders. The frolic and fight with colors occurs in the open streets, open parks, outside temples and buildings. Groups carry drums and other musical instruments and go from place to place, sing and dance.
To really experience this festival we decided to celebrate in Jaipur. And celebrate we did! Oh my goodness, what a fun and joyful festival this is! We found a great venue, mostly set up for tourists but who cares, where the colors provided were all natural and thus at the end of the day easier removable.
For days after the event you could very easily pick out the people who celebrated Holi in other places; the sometimes not so natural dyes left their marks for many many days. Orange hair? Purple skin? Yup, must be Holi.
Arriving back at the hotel after the celebrations we were awaited with a bucket of water. No entrance to the hotel until most of the colors were washed off... Oh well, you can't really blame them, but what a awesome experience!