Holi cow, what a party!
We didn’t know India could be this fun. It’s hard to put into words what celebrating Holi Festival is like, but I’ll give it a try.
We sort of came to Udaipur by accident. We wanted to book a bus ticket to Pushkar, but since they didn’t have any busses going, we chose The Venice of India instead.
We check into our hostel, which has what we call “The Porn Elevator” (which means it plays soft jazz music, and has the AC turned all the way up)
*soft jazz plays*
We then go out to get cheap clothes for Holi. I’m not about to ruin any of my outfits for this. In one of the stores, we meet Bruno from China, who is on the same mission. We all have the same list of items to get for tomorrow: flip flops, sunglasses, scarves to cover our heads, coloured powders, and coconut oil for skin and hair – especially a blonde like me needs it, if I don’t want rainbow hair. Now I kinda do.
We end up walking around the city together to buy all the items on our list, and while talking about our plans for this trip, we find out that we have similar plans from here. Perfect! We then go to several travel agents together, all with the same boring news: no busses going out on the 18th, which is the date we wanted to leave. Instead, we can either stay here for several days – or leave tomorrow, during Holi. We eventually decide that we will leave the next day. Stressful.
Because of that, our sightseeing time is limited. Boo (not really).
We get some street food at a small stall, and it’s actually pretty delicious, even though I have no idea what it is. Bruno then takes us to the temple on city square, where the priest is blessing a foreign couple, which involves getting painted on the forehead, hanging flowers around their necks and praying to a decorated sculpture of Ganesh.
At the temple, wearing the scarves we just bought
We go went to the rooftop restaurant of our hostel to have dinner and a beer before heading back to the city square for a big celebration called Holika Dahan. It is basically a burning of Holika, the Devil, and there is music, dancing and firecrackers too.
In the middle of city square, right outside of the temple, there is a huge stage with lights and balloons. On stage, a lady boy in belly dancing clothes is dancing and dragging tourists on stage to join “her”, and right then it becomes my goal to get up there and dance. We make our way through the crowd, and “she” soon notices us. Next thing we know, we join her and several other tourists for a dance, that ends up lasting about 30 minutes, with a few breaks. The locals especially seem to enjoy Yo Yo Honey Singh – Sunny Sunny Yaariyan
At one point, Sara and I are alone with the lady boy and a traditional Indian dancer, just doing our best Bollywood-esque dance. I do not want to get down from there. We are dancing in front of an entire city and they are loving it just as much as we do!
The fire with the scene in the background
Creepy panorama from the stage
When we finally get down, we meet some nice young locals, around age 10-14, who fill us is on the tradition of lighting a big fire, and they are super interested in my camera. They ask Bruno to take some pictures of us with my camera, but they never change facial expression. They also give me a balloon. Such sweet boys. We then start dancing in the crowd in front of the stage, and a circle forms around us. It’s like an epic dance-off, except it’s just me and Sara dancing like lame-o’s. People are clapping and cheering on us, but then the guys in the crowd start pushing to get to us. Some of them even grope us a little bit, but luckily we have Bruno, the young boys and some nice locals to protect usby pushing the gropers away. Aw!
The big fire in the center is about to be lit, so everyone put fire crackers around it. The line of fire crackers circle around the fire, then down to a smaller side street. Someone at the end of the line lights up the fire crackers, and it causes a domino effect, so essentially, the fire crackers light the fire. People gather in a big circle around the fire, and we are as close to the fire as we possibly can be.
I stole these pictures from The Udaipur Times
I took this one myself, though
As the fire crackers go off, we pull back to avoid getting hit by them, and then shit hits the fan. Some local guys take this opportuinty to hold on to us so we can’t move, and then they start groping us aggressively. I am holding my camera, filming the fire, while kicking the people squeezing my breasts and buttocks and shoving hands down my pants, but there’s not much I can do – they’re too many. The little boys come to my rescue as the crowd approaches the fire to start the real party. After this, Sara and I feel terrible and fragile. The worries we’ve had have until now been for nothing, but tonight has really shown us that we have been right to be careful. At the same time it is also touching that other people aren’t just standing by and watching it happening, but actually trying to help you the best they can. We decide to go back to to the hostel, before people get even drunker and rowdier. Luckily, we have an amazing rooftop restaurant, from where we can see the city square, so Bruno comes with us for a few beers. That’s when we see the fireworks over City Palace, which has its own Holika Dahan celebration. It’s a beautiful full moon night.
Next day, we soak ourselves in 27 rupees worth of coconut oil (that’s a whole jar), put on our cheap clothes and go outside. We are supposed to meet Bruno outside our hostel, but he doesn’t show up, so we head to the square by ourselves, a bit scared.
My dusty tunic (it’s supposed to be white), the jar of oil, and the colours for the day
As we step out on the street, we are greeted by aggressive tourists with squirt guns, but as soon as we are in the square, locals approach us and gently touch our faces with the coloured powder, give us a hug and say “Happy Holi!” It is way more peaceful and beautiful than I had imagined. In a way, you feel so much love around you – everyone is the same colour, which is rainbow, and no one is a stranger. This sounds super lame, but it is way more than “just” throwing coloured powder on each other.
We hang out with a couple of tourists as we all throw and rub colours on people. It’s so much fun, but intense. Drums are playing, people are dancing, and police men are constantly watching us, spanking locals with a wooden stick if they get a bit inappropriate. I feel like that should make me feel safe, but instead I find it rather rude.
The aftermath. It took an hour to barely scrub ourselves clean. My hair will probably never be blonde again!
Still, the men (I have barely seen any local women) get intoxicated, and little kids are grabbing our powders out of our bags, so after an hour and a half, we go back to the hostel and take a shower. It’s a big splash of colour in the bathroom, and of course the owner had already predicted that, so he shows up at our door and starts cleaning the bathroom. And he just won’t leave our room once he’s done, so we force him out by going to the rooftop restaurant ourselves.
Bruno shows up 30 minutes later. He overslept this morning, which is why he was nowhere to be seen, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s had a great time. The receptionists and his friends join us, and of course we get painted again.
We have a few beers and try bhang, which is a paste made from marijuana, that is put into a sweet drink, like lassi or lemonade. The owner gets us some, but is still being creepy about it, and I suspect that he’s put way too much bhang in the drink, so I only have one sip. When everyone gets a bit drunk and creepy, we check out and head to the bus stop. On the way, we meet some people that recognize us from the night before when we were dancing on stage. We are officially celebrities.
So, that was our Holi experience. I would definitely do that again, because it is a beautiful and fun tradition. Now I’ve got to try and get the red out of my hair for the 30th time. I’m officially a strawberry blonde, ugh.
