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On Sunday March 16th was a Holi festival. People celebrate the end of winter, beginning of spring, and something about some gods, too. To celebrate, people throw paint powder at each other all day long. I’m not talking about in the backyard with some friends.
The locals and tourists go into the streets and get pelted by strangers with powder that gets everywhere! Other people throw water, which makes the paint stick, and others throw oil to make it stain.
On our way home from church, Kim and I were passed by 2 motorcycles in an alley. The first sped by us, while the girl on the back of the other reached out and smacked my back as they drove by, leaving a purple handprint on my shirt and in my hair.
We made it out to a main road for a taxi which took us all the way back to Thamel, Kathmandu, our homebase. The closer we got, the slower we moved, because of people running around in the street. One guy stuck his hand in the front window of the taxi and threw a handful of yellow paint back at me, hitting me in the forehead.
Finally we made it to the corner of our hotel in Thamel. We had been warned that our area, the “tourist ghetto”, would be bad on Holi, full of crazy people running around trying to cover everyone in powder. Tourists even travel to Kathmandu for the festival. It was true.
We got out of the cab and immediately heard yells of “They’re still white!” as people ran across the street towards us. Suddenly we were each surrounded by strangers who were rubbing paint on our faces, in our hair, and even right in the mouth. We got free just in time to have a new group of people flock to us and make us more colourful.
It took about 2 minutes to get from the cab to the hotel, and we were covered by the time we got there. Happy Holi!
2 weeks later S Squad had a powder party, too. We completely coloured up each other and the alley in about 10 minutes. Shortest party ever!
