One of our biggest reasons for travelling to India this year was the opportunity to experience Holi, the colour festival. This was something that had been on the bucket list for years, so when the dates lined up with our travel plans we were both very excited. Holi is a Hindu festival celebrating the triumph of good over evil and the union between Lord Krishna and his wife Radhe. I’m not sure why this is celebrated by throwing colourful powders and painting the faces of everyone you meet, but it is, and it’s fantastic. Mathura is where Lord Krishna was born, and its twin city of Vrindavan is where and Radhe were united, so these two locations throw the biggest Holi festivities of the whole country, and Hindus from all over India come here to celebrate. We figured this would be the best place for us to have the most local experience, and make the most of being in India for the celebrations.
Most of India celebrates Holi on just one or two days, but in Mathura and the surrounding towns the festival spans a full 9 days. There are a few major events besides the general colour throwing – day 1 involves throwing sweets, while day 2 involves beating men with sticks (don’t ask me why). These events take place in Barsana, a nearby city but far enough to be worth booking a hotel there rather than Mathura if you want to join the festivities on these days. We arrived on day 4, when flowers are thrown in addition to the paint, and Vrindavan is the liveliest place to be. Everyone greets each other with shouts of ‘Radhe Radhe!’ which has a meaning somewhere between ‘Amen’ and ‘woo!’. We later discovered that this is a uniquely Vrindavan greeting, which was met with mostly blank stares when we used it in Mathura. We visited a temple filled with balloons, where the priests threw water over the crowds and flower canons sent an explosion of petals into the air every few minutes. We came across a parade making its way loudly through the narrow streets with revellers swarming the floats and dancing like crazy with rainbow-painted faces. We ended the day at the riverside, watching thousands of people cross the bridge as part of a pilgrimage we never quite understood the reason for (noone we asked had good enough English to explain it!).
I have to tell you about an experience on this day that was nothing to do with Holi but a relevant warning for anyone visiting Vrindavan at any time, and also one of the most ridiculous things I think ever to happen to me. I was walking down the street, before any Holi craziness had begun, when I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye, and turned to see a monkey. It seemed like he had been rushing me, but stopped when I turned to look at him. There are monkeys everywhere in India and I’m used to having to walk by them. They can get aggressive when they see you have food and they want to steal it, but I had no food and since the monkey had turned and stalked off when I saw him, I wasn’t too worried about him trying again. The next thing I knew he had pounced onto my shoulders, reached around and grabbed my glasses off my face, and run off into a driveway! I was stunned enough to have absolutely no idea what to do. Some locals saw and rushed over, and a kid immediately chased the monkey into the driveway and threw it some fruit so it’d drop the glasses. The damned thing dropped them on the other side of a locked gate, and I honestly think it was smart enough to do it on purpose just to spite me. The kid managed to reach through the bars and pull the glasses close enough to salvage, and all was well. I was still stunned, but the locals just laughed and said they’re known for it in Vrindavan. I googled it and this actually happens all the time! I spent the rest of the day mostly just carrying my glasses and twitching at every movement around me, which is an awful lot of twitching when you’re in the most populous country in the world.
Days 5-7 of Holi in Mathura have no specific extra events, so we decided to leave town – the hotels were hugely overpriced due to the festival, and we hadn’t managed to find anywhere nice enough to relax for the next three days before the celebrations picked up again at the weekend. So we headed to Agra, less than an hour away by train, and enjoyed a relaxing few days of sightseeing and eating well. (If you’re interested in my Agra experience or want some tips for visiting I’ve written about it here.) We headed back to Mathura on day 7, and decided to visit the temple that stands on the exact location where Lord Krishna was born, before it got even busier with the influx of people for the biggest days of Holi (days 8 and 9). Almost every temple we visited during this time had a big dance party going on inside, and the feeling of celebration was infectious.
On day 8 the Holi festivities included a large procession through the streets, where we were invited to climb on board one of the parade floats that was essentially a tractor pulling a large cart, and join the locals dancing and throwing colours at anyone and everyone as we made our way through the streets. We were covered from head to toe in every colour of the rainbow – until an over-enthusiastic individual threw a whole bucket of blue water over Creed and he was blue for the rest of the day. Once the parade was over we headed back to our hotel for a bit of respite. We weren’t able to relax too much because we needed to shower about 14 times each, and still we both had quite brightly dyed skin, hair and clothes. It didn’t really matter, because the next day was the main Holi day, and we knew we’d be covered in paint again as soon as we left our door. We just wanted to be clean enough to climb into the luxurious squishy bed with the spotless white sheets!
In the evening huge pyres were built all over the town with effigies of Holika, the demon who was burned in a victory of good over evil that Holi celebrates today. Every block in the city seems to have its own fire happening and once the bonfire in the centre of town is lit, the next fire down the road goes up, and on and on, spreading outwards across the city. Interestingly, instead of firewood, the bonfires are made by piling up dried cowpat and covering them in silk and streamers. There is very little information online about when and where the various Holi events are happening. We mostly did okay finding them, but we definitely appreciated help from the locals when they had advice. On this evening we met a particularly friendly guy, who invited us back to his home for dinner, because there were still a couple of hours before the bonfires would be let. We gratefully accepted and were happy to meet and learn more about his family, and eat some delicious home-cooked food! You definitely have to be wary when accepting invitations like this, but it’s usually fairly obvious when somebody is genuine with good intentions, and these truly local moments and connections are often some of the best experiences in travel. We then headed back to the main square to watch the Holika ceremony which started just before midnight. It doesn’t take long for Holika to burn, and people disperse while the rest of the fire continues to blaze. Walking home past large unattended fires very close to buildings, vehicles and electrical boxes was quite an alarming experience, but no disasters appear to have occurred.
The main Holi day this year was on Monday 25th March. After the previous few days of colour wars and craziness, we were almost Holied out – it’s a very intense experience, so I recommend booking early to secure a nice hotel that will provide an oasis from the storm! Today the buckets of coloured water were everywhere, and we were drenched within seconds of leaving our hotel room. This was frustrating, because it wasn’t the light-hearted, joyous celebration of colour that Holi is known for, it was more like all out warfare. There were no specific events on this day like parades or bonfires, so we simply wandered the streets, and were about to head back to dry off and find some peace when we found Jessica, a girl we’d met up with the previous day. She had a local friend who knew about a temple celebration that started just down the round in about 5 minutes. I’m so glad we crossed paths, because this was the highlight of the day. I have no idea what the actual ceremony was, but I duly joined the line and was ushered past the altar which nobody seemed to be paying attention to. Afterwards people congregated in the inner courtyard and danced and sang and threw colours, and we finally saw the joy of the festival. It was an incredible atmosphere, and the perfect way to end our Holi experience.
Our experience of the Holi festival in general was a little mixed. There were some incredibly kind and generous people, and everyone was keen to say hello, help us participate, and take many selfies with us. There were also some people who saw the opportunity to touch our faces with paint as permission to have no boundaries at all. I’d heard from others on a women’s travel Facebook group that it was common for white women to experience some inappropriate attention during Holi and unfortunately this turned out to be true. I haven’t experienced that anywhere else in 2 months of travelling India, and it’s frustrating to have such an incredible cultural experience of celebration that has been on the bucket list a long time be tainted. I would still recommend experiencing Holi as there were lots of fantastic moments and the colours truly are a sight to behold, but if possible it is best to stick with a local, as it seems to make the others locals restrain themselves a little more – plus they might have a clue what’s going on and take you to the best temples!