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Holi is a india’s celebration of spring - synced with the full moon, when hindus bring offerings of flowers, fruit, cow dung, and color to the temples. we find ourselves in one of the HOLI-est places in India: Lord Krishna’s birthplace. There is an abundance of festivity around here. Temples of cow dung (fuel for tonights bonfire) and bowls of color line the streets. Cows, goats, and roosters are spattered with colors. The Yamuna River is filled with floating flowers and the ghats are crowded with bathing devotees. Krishna everywhere merchants and kids and passersby laugh and shout “hare bol, hare Krishna, happee holi.” Today hemp is rolled openly into a grassy green paste referred to as Bhang. Devotees from all over India gather here to take part in this riot of color. And yes, some of the kids around here take the “riot” part of it quite literally. Pranks and mishchief and silliness fill the streets for days. Yesterday (2 days prior to HOLI, mind you) we returned from a day in Vrindivan, crusty and coated in bright powders, waving our colorful bodies like victory flags. wishing we knew how to say “you should have seen the other guy!” in hindi. We are in India after all, and this is a hindu celebration, so basically anything goes on the HOLI battlefield. swarming packs of kids charged us with fist-fulls of colored powder. They had been waiting for this glorious moment with their water pistols balloons and buckets, with their bowls of colorful amo and reserves of ever plentiful cow dung at the ready! along came the perfect target: Two Americans, one Englishman. So much clean white skin. of course, we didn’t dare go into the day unarmed.we even picked our share of fights! But my puny 20rp. fish-shaped water pistol and abel and liam’s plastic powder/water filled bottles didn’t stand a chance against those uncivilized color savages. They fought tirelessly. I got my face smeared in blue color, abel got the drenched-in-a-bucket-o-water treatment, and our friend liam was got blasted in the head with cow dung! Thankfully he was wearing a hat! All day long the tiny troops continued to squirt, spray, splash us with water and powder. It’s wild fun. Today is the eve of Holi. More adults have joined in the color play today (generally, there's a bit more warmth in grown up play - gentle smears of color on the cheeks), and the excited energy is building throughout the city. Currently we are covered in color from our morning walk, parading our hot pink smiling faces around the city of mathura. Ready for just about anything... Happee HOLI!
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