Holi Moley!! Mathura and Vrindavan

Since we are very festive, Jon and I decided that the best place to celebrate Holi, the color festival, in the birthplace of Lord Krishna. We took a bus to Delhi, a rickshaw to a bus company in Delhi and then another bus to Mathura. The ride should've taken 3 hours. It took around 5. Jon and I sat in front of the bus, next to the driver, probably so that we wouldn't have the ability to compare the prices of the bus tickets around us-we got a little bit ripped off. When we got to our "stop," the driver stopped along the side of the highway road and gestured with his hand for us to get off. "Mathura" he said. We grabbed our packs and a bicycle rickshaw and headed into town. We passed camels pulling carts, cows roaming freely, piles of color, curious stares and fruit carts. We pulled in to a moderately priced hotel and checked in. That night, we decided to explore the town and inquire about Holi to the locals. As we walked, a man who owned a parcel shop invited us in for a cold drink. Shortly after entering, he smeared orange powder over our faces and hair and yelled "happy Holi!!" That was only the beginning. The next day, the day before the festival, we decided to see the Krishna Temple and scope out the scene. As we were leaving the hotel, we discussed what we planned to wear the following day. Shortly after arriving at the temple, our decision was made for us as my white shirt was doused in blue food-colored water and Jon was smeared with light pink powder and the blue water. The following day, the day of the festival, we dressed in our grimiest attire and headed downstairs. I asked the man at reception to change my 500 rupee note and as he reached down under the desk to do so, he returned with a handful of green, chalky powder the color of Nickelodeon slime and smeared it in my face. "Happy Holi!!" So it started. We continued to the street where we caught a bicycle rickshaw and headed into town. Being westerners, and some of the only ones in the area, we may as well have worn bullseyes on our backs. People stopped on their mopeds, even turned around when they saw us and covered us with color. Within minutes of leaving the guest house, we looked like a middle-school tye-dye project gone bad. We continued on the the Krishna temple where. It was absolutely insane. We couldn't catch our breath at times between the dousing of water and colored powder. At one point, a kind man stopped the chaos and sat me down to clear the powder out of my blinded eyes with his dampened t-shirt. People waited, anticipating the moment I would be fair game again. After a short while, I was all holied out. We returned to the guest house where showers were nonexistent. Our source of cleansing was dumping a small bucket into a larger bucket and pouring it over our bodies. Much of the dye was permanent and after nearly an hour of cleaning, my hair had a green tint, Jon looked like he was wearing one of those clown wigs, and our bodies had splotches of blue and pink for nearly a week.

While we were drying out on the roof, we met a group of Indian men our age who had come down from Delhi to celebrate. They offered to take us around to different temples and act as my body guards against overzealous festival participants. We went to multiple different temples and were treated to snacks in between by our new friends. We ended our tour at a temple, dancing and singing with the locals and visitors. When we returned to our guest house, we all played a game of King's Cup and ended the night dancing and singing in their room. It was a night we aren't soon to forget. The next morning, we were scheduled to fly to Mumbai, so we had to make our way back to Delhi.