Holi Wars

When we left India, I was a bit disappointed that we were missing Holi (pronounced 'holly') by less than a week. As we'd learned from watching the movie Outsourced, Holi is a Hindu holiday that's celebrated by throwing brightly colored powder at other people. As seen in the movie, nobody is safe from Holi. As long as you're out of your house, you're a fair target. 

To our surprise, Holi is also celebrated in Nepal (which makes sense since Hinduism is the country's predominate religion, but we recently just learned that as well). For our second day in Kathmandu, Scott and I set out with goals to be accomplished – buy our TIMS (Trekker's Information Management System) cards, book a flight to Lukla where our trekking will be out of, buy food for the trail as well as other last minute supplies. Well, today, being Holi, turned out to be a crazy day to be doing a lot of running around Kathmandu, which is exactly what Scott and I were doing.

As soon as we walked out of our guesthouse in the tourist district of Thamel, we saw streetside vendors selling brightly colored powder and waterguns. In order to get the TIMS cards, we had to wander through many small alleyways and streets between Thamel and Naxal district and found ourselves in the crossfire of several Holi wars between groups of kids, teenagers, neighbors. People of all ages adourned in face paint or covered in a smattering of red, purple, yellow, green, and blue powder were drenched from makeshift waterballoons – small, clear plastic bags filled with plain water or colored water – or from buckets of water being dumped from rooftops or thrown at ground level. 

Besides just being caught in the crossfire, Scott and I were also direct targets. We'd pass kids gingerly cradling water-filled bags and as soon as our backs were to them – bam! – we were nailed, water dripping down our buttcracks. Some smaller children were even so polite as to request, "Can I hit? Can I hit?" before pegging us. Innocent people peddling along on bicycles were getting hit hard by water bags thrown by people on the street. Sometimes we had two or three different armed groups coming at us from different angles. At that point, all we could do was run fast. 

By the time we got some of our errands done and returned to Thamel, tourists and locals alike were covered head to toe in colored powder. People ould say "Happy Holi" as they smeared each other with color. Some groups got so rowdy the police had to intervene to break up the Holi crowds. 

Holi in Kathmandu was a city-wide waterballoon fight where anything and everything is fair gamke. In some parts of Thamel, Scott and I saw remnants of thrown raw eggs – that we were not the receiving end of one of those was something to be thankful for.