Week 5, India: Fifty Shades of Holi

The experiences

I arrived in India in the dead of night not knowing really where I was because of all the layovers and travel craziness. The next morning I awoke (very late) to find that I'm now adopted as part of a wonderful family in Vrindavan at the Shree Bindu Sewa Sansthan Ashram. There are about five Europeans here as well. 

I won't go into names and faces too much as that would make for an even longer post you all couldn't possibly relate to, but really that's what made this week of my trip amazing. But if you want to see photos of the whole gang and our adventures, check out my facebook page (works even if you don't have facebook--i think).

Most of the time I sat around and read in the peace of this place (on my new kindle! Thanks again for sending it mom!).  We started our days with yoga (I was able to get back into it a bit and do a half hand stand--also known to american tumblers as the tripod) and were very well fed (amazingly delicious). 

On my second day, one of my fellow travelers took me out into the city to see some temples and the Loi Bazaar. We had a lovely 5 minute photo session while we were out on day two with 5 random guys at a temple. Yes, we're white, probably more white than we should be, but they were so happy to see us and excited to get a picture or 100, we couldn't resist. I avoided the temptation to buy hoards of gorgeous clothing by only bringing a thousand rupees with me and instead tried to focus on things going on around me (ie the crazy amount of cows, pigs, dogs and monkeys roaming the streets). After 4 hours I was thoroughly exhausted (perhaps just sensory overload) and took a nice long nap.

I only took peaceful photos :)

I cannot take credit for the title of this post as it came about in a very hilarious Holi planning discussion. Some of you know I planned the first countries and timelines around making it to India for Holi. I came to Vrindavan because it is the city of Krishna and the BEST place to celebrate. Here the celebration lasts 5 days instead of one or two as in other parts of India and the celebration is much more intense. The ashram planned a wonderful celebration so us foreigners wouldn't go out into town and get massacred (read: showered with color) by complete strangers, instead we got our own Holi party with the full staff and family and school children at the ashram.

Days leading up to the final two were fairly mild. We got hit while walking through town by a few pink water squirt guns and I took a few water balloons to the back, but nothing major. Thursday though, we started to throw powder at the Ashram. Powder is less dangerous than the water since you can bush it off, but that doesn't mean I didn't get CAKED with the stuff. Even after a shower I still had a whole patch of orange on my forehead. And as you can tell from the picture below, I still have that inner urge to fight against messes. My mom reminded me that when I was a little girl I would cry when my dress had a spot on it. But I powered through and got messy because these types of color fights are so cool. But like with other similar things (ie Laser Tag for my Lancaster peeps) I'm great at getting hit but not so great at getting others.

Photo Credit: Melanie

This all became more apparent to me on the official day of Holi when the colored water came out. It was a kid's paradise with a child pool filled with freshly made colored water (they stayed up all night boiling water and flowers in enormous kettles), squirt guns, soda bottles filled and somewhere hiding were even more vats of color including large sacks of color powder (SURPRISE!). I was a gonner. My favorite was helping the kids open bottles (since our hands were covered in the protective mud for our skin) and immediately after opening one, they emptied it on me while I was opening another. Did I learn my lesson? No, I opened about 10 bottles for them.

Much scrubbing later we were all semi clean of color although me and another girl had new hair colors! They are fading with each wash but it is amazingly cool work--everyone thinks I'm lying when I say it's from Holi because the stripes are so perfect--so even though mom doesn't like that weird/easy bubble thing in my hair, it really paid off this time.

After the colors and dancing stopped, I had another day to relax before I hit the road again. Thank goodness because these kids (and adults) really tuckered me out.

One thing I want to stress here is that I had lots of choices and ideas for where to spend Holi and I'm very glad I picked Shree Bindu Sewa Sansthan Ashram. The family there is absolutely wonderful and helpful and some are fluent in German. Everything they do is for the good of the community, especially the school they run and sponsor. They give kids a chance at an education free of any fees, corporal punishment, and recognition of caste. And they're working on opening a restaurant which, I can speak from experience, you should definitely put on your list of places to go.

I think no matter where I go, this country will continue to surprise me. So even though I'm here for over another month, in the words of Monty Python: now for something completely different.

The lessons

Keeping color from sinking too far in: a process

• Cover your body and head and hair completely with oil
• Cover you body and head and hari completely with mud
• Let stand
• If you don't want awesome hair, put something (scarf, shower cap) over your head
• Post color, reapply mud
• Massage vigorously
• Rinse
• Repeat
• Use a corneal mixture as an exfoliator to get any stubborn sections clean
• Rinse
• Repeat
• If you still need help getting free of color, take a massage (the oil will take it out)

Interesting

• Everything