India 4 – Holi Festival Part 2 – Barsana

Barsana, India, Holi Festival 2018 -selling colors

We spent two days in Barsana for the Holi Festival.  This is the second of three parts covering those days.

Holi powder is sold everywhere. We were told that only red and yellow should be used though, as those represent the upper caste, while blue and green were for the lower castes.

Barsana, India, Holi Festival 2018 -painted faces

After only a couple hours, everyone we saw (including ourselves) was covered in paint of various colors. This was truly a rainbow coalition, with paint that would stay with us for days in some cases.

Barsana, India, Holi Festival 2018 -kids

Kids joined in the fun, both in the throwing of paint, and in the getting painted.  Some kids would wait on the rooftops, and squirt those underneath with paint mixed into water, making for a particularly messy tableau (upper right)

Barsana, India, Holi Festival 2018 -beards

Many of the elder men wore long, usually grey, beards. Though a few stayed relatively paint-free for a few hours, by the end of the day, beards looking like the middle image above became the norm.

Barsana, India, Holi Festival 2018 -travelers

Above are images of our merry gang by the end of the day.  Oliver Klink, our photography guide, is shown lower-left, while I am in the middle image above.  hmmm… I kinda like that portrait. Maybe I will make that my new online avatar…

 

Believe me when I say that you can probably not conceive of the level of pandemonium and mob mentality of this crowd trying to get into the temple.  This 30 second clip only gives a brief view of what we encountered.

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