Holi - The Festival of Love

This is me, at my hairiest!

This is the first part in what will be a series of my experiences on an 18 month journey that went through Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. I won't be writing about these memories in any specific order, I will just pick out places or things that I want to share and hopefully provide others with ideas for their own adventures.

Holi is a massive event, celebrated in spring each year in India, with hundreds of millions people celebrating it globally every year. In 2013 I was fortunate enough to be in India during the festival, it was one of the most memorable days of my life. Definitely a highlight of my travels. The festival is to celebrate love and brings the opportunity to put aside differences, an important thing when you live in a country of 1 billion people.

The festival is celebrated with color, lots and lots of color. Colored powdered dyes are used to throw around and more traditionally to smear on the face of others you encounter throughout the celebrations. The use of colored water via water pistols and water balloons is also common, however if you plan to wash the color off I strongly recommend you avoid getting it wet! I had to fly home for my brothers wedding about 10 days after Holi and had only just got my skin back to normal before the event! So be warned! Don't let those kids with water pistols near you or your skin will be all sorts of colors for the foreseeable future. Although don't let this stop you having an absolute blast! The more you immerse yourself into the festival the more you will be embraced by the amazing people you will meet along the way, the more you will come to know the spirit of the people in this beautiful country.

Some of the friendly faces of the locals celebrating Holi in Jaipur.

We started the day out with a group of fellow backpackers, a mix from around the world, Australians, Germans and French. None of us had seen anything like Holi before, but we were all excited by the opportunity to experience it first hand.

The hot sun couldn't stop us (at least not for a few hours) enjoying the atmosphere and diving into in the celebrations. Going through the old city in Jaipur and meeting hundreds of locals along the way. There something special about being welcomed into an ancient celebration of love with open arms by warm hearts and friendly smiles.

So much color and so much but eventually we couldn't take the heat anymore, in Jaipur it can be oppressively hot. Eventually we had to take refuge, before we collapsed!

We found ourselves a nice bar and settled in to have a few drinks and enjoy another local tradition, a green Lassi

About Holi

The name holi comes from “Holika”, the sister of demon King “Hiranyakashyap”


It is celebrated after the full moon in the month of ‘Phalguna’ which generally falls between February and March.


The exact date of the festival is determined by the Hindu Calendar and its arrival varies on the Gregorian calendar. Often it falls around the same time as Easter, but this is not a solid guide.

For more interesting facts about Holi check out http://thefactfile.org/holi-interesting-facts/

Hope you enjoyed this post and maybe even found some inspiration to visit India for this wonderful festival as well as its many other amazing attractions.