Holi Festival in New Delhi
The festival signifies the victory of good over evil, the arrival of spring, end of winter, and for many a festive day to meet others, play and laugh, forget and forgive, and repair ruptured relationships.
Holi is a free-for-all carnival of colours, where participants play, chase and colour each other with dry powder and coloured water, with some carrying water guns and coloured water-filled balloons for their water fight. Anyone and everyone is fair game, friend or stranger, rich or poor, man or woman, children and elders. All colours are used. Everyone in open areas such as streets and parks are game. Inside homes or at doorways though, only dry powder is used to smear each other's face. People throw colours, and get their targets completely coloured up. It is like a water fight, but where the water is coloured. People take delight in spraying coloured water on each other. By late morning, everyone looks like a canvas of colours. This is why Holi is given the name “Festival of Colours.”
And what a better way of spending my last day in Delhi than celebrating the beginning of spring, celebrating Holi!
I left my hotel after breakfast, they had a taxi rented the whole day, so they where really kind to tell me I could use it cause Holi is a holiday and no metro or taxi was available until 2:30pm.
I was meeting a friend from a friend of mine that had just arrived to Delhi the night before and we where going to meet, so we could travel together to Rishikesh the next day.
He was staying next to the train station, on a street full of hotels... Actually when I got to the area I thought this was better place to stay than where I was, and it turn out to be much cheaper. Yeah it's a backpackers area... But when traveling alone I think it's better to stay in a place where there's a lot of people to meet. My guesthouse was nice, like a home, but there was no one there I could meet.
So we stayed and celebrated Holi around the hotel! Was lots of fun... On the streets there where Indians and tourists all mixed together. When I say Indians I mean only males, women, the few a saw, where not playing the color game... So as you can imagine the Indian guys where very happy to be able to celebrate with the western women. Some times getting to close to crossing the line... But hey, they where just trying, why not? I guess for them all western girls are easy, and ok to touch, compared to Indian women they actually respect.
But besides the few annoying, too happy maybe drunk young guys... It was a nice party to celebrate. People would walk around the streets, with little plastic bags on their hands full with some color powder. When meeting some on the the street the idea was to aprouch, say happy Holi, and put some of the color in their faces, the other person would answer the same way. Then they would hug you or give hands, try maybe to take a picture with the girls and then keep walking their way!
Some times walking along the street you would get all cover with water... Colored water! People from the rooftops with water balloons or just buckets will throw water on you! And that was ok! Cause it's part of the celebration!
So why not... After getting wet many times buy the people from the building next to us... We decided to get payback! And so we bought water balloons and went to a window in the second floor of the hotel! From there we starting throwing balloons and water to people passing by, even to the motorcycles carrying not 2, but up to 4 people in the same moto!
Was a fun party, and a good way of spending a day in Delhi, a city I didnt like so much the day I arrived, didn't felt safe walking around, didn't want to leave my hotel at all... If it wasn't for the Holi festival I think I would have left to Rishikesh that same day.
But I'm happy I stayed, and happy I had the chance to meet a few locals and had some laugh with them!
