Hooray, Hooray, It's a happy Holi day

Saturday was to be a quiet day. I'd had a long week and was quite tired, so didn't particularly want anything too busy. Also, Ziima wanted to come over and see the photos so I needed to spend some time sorting out the ones I liked and processing them. I managed to finish them a little before she arrived (click here to see the photos).

She arrived pretty much on time and called up to the room. I went down and found that she'd brought a boyfriend with her. I was less than comfortable with both of them coming up to the room (even with most stuff in the safe), so suggested that we go through the photos in the lounge.

In the end I needn't have worried - they were both very pleasant and he was very helpful with getting her to choose the photos she wanted. In fact it went so well that I had to remind her to take the balance of the money. She thanked me very much and said that I'd been very generous (a sure sign that I'd significantly overpaid, but again, my stupidity, my fault).

Later in the afternoon I went out to investigate Holi. This is a festival that celebrates the start of the summer season and is timed with the full moon. It seems to start the evening before the full moon and then goes on through the following day. Saturday evening was the start and I went around the local area (with camera, of course). One group of lads invited me in to the residential area to show me the bonfires being set up.

The people had already started getting coloured up, and I had various colours put on my face. You can either decide to take offence at that, or in good part. You normally have a better time (and get better photos) if you join in. The group proudly took me round the area, showing me three bonfires being prepared and showing off for the camera..

Heading back to the hotel (via the coffee shop for a drink / tea) I got plenty of amused looks, which suggested that I'd been got good and proper. Back in the hotel I saw that there had been plenty of paint, but not too bad really (considering the extent I'd seen on some). A shower later and I decided against heading out to see the bonfires themselves.

The following morning I got up reasonably early for a 9am breakfast. I had arranged with one of my client colleagues that we would meet then and then head off to Juhu beach. This is one of the main areas for celebrations. We got there about 10:30 (leisurely breakfast, and a bit of a problem finding a taxi driver, although the drive to the north of the city was easy and he didn't get lost once).

Walking along the beach there were hundreds of people around, many in family groups as well as groups of young men and women. Most of them were covered in paint, and many had handfuls of the stuff to spread liberally on anybody around (us, for example). Getting photographs was easy - many people actively asked me to take photos, and those who didn't were generally more than happy to have their pictures taken.

Juhu beach is quite a pleasant, sandy beach. I'm not at all sure I'd want to go into the water, though. It got ridiculously warm, though and by 12:30 we were looking to head back to the hotel. By that time we were both liberally covered in paint - fortunately we were both in the cheap t-shirts we'd bought on Friday evening so it wasn't too bad.

A shower at the hotel got rid of the worst of the paint (but not all of it - there's probably going to be bits of it around for a few more days yet. The rest of the afternoon was lazy, with a brief trip out around 8 p.m. for a quick bite.