Happy Holi

This post is text-heavy because I didn’t bring my camera (for reasons that will be clear soon).

You know those escape room companies that have sprung up like weeds around the US where you get locked in a room for a period of time and have to get out? That was basically Holi, but my goal was to escape the city unscathed, and the consequences were a little bit more severe. Holi is the festival where you aggressively rub colored powder in people’s faces or throw water balloons filled with unclean water and paint on them. I thought you gently tossed the paint on people, so the aggressiveness really took me by surprise. It started out innocently in our community (except that I accidentally got a mouthful of water and paint from a water balloon) where I felt like i was assimilating into the community. Playing with the kids in the neighborhood for the first time, it felt like they were finally getting used to our presence there; like we belonged. The situation changed when we reached the tourist part of the city. It is noto

A typical alleyway (not taken during Holi)

rious for hawkers prying on naive tourists, and just not a place I like to frequent.

The tourist area has very narrow, long alleys made of inches of mud. People would go to the roofs of the four-story buildings to throw water balloons at unexpecting tourists. So my group of five would spread out, two people at front looking for ambushes, and the rest darting along behind when the coast was clear. It was harmless fun! The locals got to abuse the tourists a little bit, and we got very wet (it was a warm day- it felt good) and very muddy. We acted like spies under desperate attack.

At one point, we saw a bunch of young people who had just arrived from the airport, trying to roll their suitcases through the mud roads to their hostel. Everyone paused from throwing color and water on each other for a minute to contemplate this. Then, all of a sudden, a boy ran up and dumped colored powder all over one of the girls, and it was on. Those poor tourists emerged a few minutes later much more colorful. In Nepali, that’s called “rangie-changie.”

The first part of the day was fun- sneaking around trying to avoid sneak attacks. When we reached Durbar Square, the main event with concerts, it was completely packed. Durbar Square had been totally destroyed in the earthquake, and people were standing on the remains of the old temples. Of course, I immediately got separated from my group because the crowd was pushing us in all different directions. Just another challenge in the escape route. I hung out with an American couple until my friends could circle back for me. We stayed in the square for around 20 minutes, but it was too much for all of us. By that point, we had been celebrating Holi for three hours, so I was ready to go home. Even leaving was incredibly difficult. The crowd was quite intense (~10,000 packed into a city square) and we had to really hold onto each other and elbow our way through the crowd. Not an experience I want to repeat, but it was good to be at the epicenter of celebration once.

Durbar Square on Holi

A week later, every time I shower, the water still has some weird color to it as I clean myself. I’m not convinced I’ll ever be Holi-color free. I sneezed the other day and it was the most colorful sneeze anyone ever’s done. It doesn’t help that we haven’t had water to shower with for a few days. Anyway, it was fun. If you’re ever in a Holi-celebrating country, I highly recommend finding a quieter neighborhood in which to celebrate.

My colorful friends!