Holi

Well..

what to say about holi?

It is the color festival, and I think it celibrates the coming of spring, and hopefully a good future harvest. People walk and drive along the streets, carrying bags with colored-powder in them. Anyone passing gets painted with the color, sometimes gently, sometimes pretty rough. And so after a few blocks of walking, you end up being completely colored. I ended up with three layers of watercolor on my face, with a load of powders on the rest of my body and with a few stains that will never get out of my just bought white shirt (bought especially for holi).

We went together in a big group of about 15 people, and along the way on the streets we met a lot of Indian..drunken..people. Note that it was only 14:00, and then you know that this was a crazy party. The ladies in our group even got more color than the men, cause the drunken Indians use this festival as an opportunity to finally touch the women (In normal life they are not allowed to, except for their wife of course). Thanks to the colors you can even see that they were touched on inappropriate places (although they sometimes did that to themselves to).

Later that night we were brought to a small courtyard of a school by Mr Singh (the husband of the landlady), where a giant stack of hay was being burned in some kind of Hindu ritual. Since any small open fire is prohibited in the netherlands, seeing this big fire was pretty amazing. Especially since it was in the middle of a school-courtyard with children running around it, hehe.

All in all..holi was another great weekend in Jaipur..