06/03/2015 – Last day of our trip and it should be a colorful as well as fun day. The grand final after Traveling to Delhi, Kathmandu, Chennai, Panadura in Sri Lanka and Mumbai: the holi festival. At noon we were invited at a LEO friend for a wonderful and typical local lunch. After a while we had to get prepared for holi, which means: cover mobiles as well as cameras in plastic bags, save ones hair by wrapping towels around ones head. Then everyone got equipped with bags full of this special color-powder.
Between the houses the party started: A DJ played pretty hard house tunes (I tried to find similar on soundcloud which you can listen below) and the crowd was partying like there was no tomorrow. What I did not know, the highlight of the day were not the colors, but the artificial rain and water-fountains. Holi here is totally different to what I have expected. I thought that people are „just“ throwing colors to the air and celebrate spring, but what we could experience was totally different!
People were greasing colors into other peoples faces and shouting „Happy Holi!“, they were dancing in the water-fountains and having so much fun. Now I understand why our friends told us to bring the oldest clothes we could find, because everything, really everything got soaked wet and messed up. It took me hours and even days to get out the color powder from my shoes, trousers and even the camera.
For me, this was a huge and wonderful experience, although I was standing next to the crowd and taking pictures. But next time I’ll definitely leave my camera in the room and enjoy the water fountains as well. Unfortunately in the evening it was time to say good bye. We had to check out from our hotel at midnight and get to the airport and onto our flight back home to Linz via Frankfurt.
What an awesome time we had – and I hope you enjoyed viewing the pictures as well.
Let the party start!