Nepal: Holi Festival

Happy happy Holi!

Until this past week, Holi has only ever existed in my mind as a foreign holiday automatically marked on my Apple calendar every Spring— promptly ignored, easily forgotten. However, after experiencing the Festival of Colors at full force in the epicenter of Nepali culture, I will never again be able to regard this day with such dismissal.

In its simplest form, this Hindu Festival is a celebration of love, forgiveness, acceptance, and the triumph of good over evil— basically all of the best aspects of humanity— and that energy was palpable throughout the streets of Kathmandu on March 17th. On this day, tradition demands that every man, woman and child arm themselves with water balloons and fistfuls of neon powder, which are then to be thrown, splattered and smeared on to every passerby ( out of love, of course). You can imagine what the end result of such a day would look like, but I will also provide pictures for context.

I left my house in Bhaktapur at 8:30am clad in a white t-shirt, throw-away pants and a fanny pack, on my way to catch a bus into the heart of the action: Thamel, Kathmandu. I naively assumed that I would be safe at such an early hour in my rural area, however, not 2 minutes from my home, I got hit by my first water balloon. Of course, once one bold little boy broke the seal, kids around ever corner smiled shyly at me as I passed before launching their arsenal. I hopped on the bus a little wet, but was comforted to see I was not alone. It was Holi, after all. Arriving in Thamel, I was approached by strangers of all backgrounds and ages, all of whom wished me a “happy Holi” while smearing colored powder on my face. The act was startlingly intimate, but I quickly accepted that this was simply the expectation on Holi, and so I purchased a bag of powder from one of the many stands and began to return the favor.

Finally arriving on the rooftop of Hotel Arts, I met up with a group of volunteers and local team members Cwani, Bijen and Shristy, who had all gathered to kick off the celebrations. Twelve bags of colored powder were opened on the table, waiting for someone to make the first move. Without hesitation, Shristy dug his hands into neon pink and began to smear it across our faces, each accompanied with a grin and “happy Holi!”. From that point on, it was war. Bijen’s son and nephew broke out the water guns while Cwani turned on the hose, and the rest of us snatched up whatever powder we could find. Shristy served us up some Nepali beer as colors and water were thrown, our white shirts and clean faces quickly becoming unrecognizable. My own face would appear yellow in one picture, blue the next as I was assaulted with handfuls of powder from various culprits, all in the name of love and friendship. After we “played Holi” for about an hour, we took to the streets, sufficiently painted and ready to party.

It took no time to find the first crowd, centered around a DJ that had set up in the middle of the street. Puffs of neon powder clouded the air as the party-goers danced with abandon, pausing regularly to smear some of their own powder on whoever was closest. It was one of the most joyous celebrations I had been a part of. That is, until a kid chucked blue powder right into my mouth. I am certain I ingested a solid amount of cancerous dye throughout the day, but absolutely nothing could kill the vibe of a million people literally gathered to celebrate goodness. After a bit, we extracted ourselves from the first party and continued on towards Durbar Square (the hub). Walking down the streets, we couldn’t go 10 steps without a smear of powder, and it quickly became evident that the locals went out of their way to target the obvious foreigners. It was difficult to determine if it should be taken as a compliment or an assault. In addition to the attack of colors, we also had to be wary of water attacks. Greater than the threat of water balloons launched from dark doorways was the issue of full buckets of water being emptied onto us from four stories up, for which there was no warning. Dripping, coughing and partially blinded, we arrived at another DJ spot and stopped to dance for a while, shaking off excess powder around the eyes and mouth while once again embracing the overwhelming happiness of the crowd.

After another foray down the perilous side streets of Thamel, we arrived at Durbar Square, where we pushed through the largest crowds yet. It was around this point that we realized the correlation: bigger the crowd, the more local male-dominated, and the more aggressively they went after female foreigners. It was literally getting hard to breath around the powder. After dancing a bit more, we decided to turn around and head towards lighter traffic, however, there was no escape from people trying to add to the smothered canvas of our face and clothes. It seemed that partiers were relatively respectful of those who were not obviously dressed for the festivities, but for a group of young, white women like us, dripping red, purple and yellow, it was moths to a flame.

We finally extracted ourselves from the masses around 3:00 and found refuge in a rooftop cafe, where we ordered a round of beers and took some deep breaths. After a laborious trip to the washroom, we were quick to realize that the dye was not coming off of our skin any time soon, so we sat back in all of our colors and enjoyed some food and calm— I suppose any restaurant owner open on Holi inherently accepts the mess of dye that is bound to mar their tables, chairs and sinks throughout the day. We sat for a while, decompressing and reflecting on the exciting and also traumatizing aspects of our day, before heading our separate ways.

I caught a bus back to Surybinayak and arrived at the house just in time to meet my host family and all of their neighborhood friends arriving home from a Holi community picnic. Still absolutely smothered in dye from head to toe, they all took in my appearance and congratulated me on a Holi well celebrated. We then broke out the party speaker (the same one featured on Maha Shivaratri) and kept the party going, dancing in the front yard as we all enjoyed leftovers from the picnic. I was even offered a cup of “Nepali wine”, which was absolutely not wine. Upon further research, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I was drinking was in fact Raksi, a clear Nepali spirit fermented from millet that hits 45% ABV. As you might imagine, I drank it slow. Since that night, I have heard from several community friends what a “great dancer” they think I am, and I’m not quite sure whether to blame the Raksi or thank it.

The night finally wound down and I retired to my room to begin the long process of washing my body and hair to the best of my ability. I would like you to take a good, long look at the pictures above and appreciate what a task this shower was. After 20 minutes of scrubbing and shampooing, I gave up on the smudges of dye that had soaked into my palms, chest and ears, and joined my family upstairs for a cup of tea to cap off the celebrations.

It was an incredible, fascinating, overstimulating experience that I might not want to repeat, but Holi in Kathmandu was an event to remember. Unlike other rowdy celebrations, there was an evident air of genuine happiness and kindness that permeated the whole event, as if everyone had really embodied the significance of this “Festival of Love”, as Holi is otherwise known. I have once again been blown away by yet another inspiring display of Nepali culture, and I am that much closer to losing my heart to these people.