Palamariu Family Blog

The 1^st of March, Indians celebrate Holi, the festival of colors. In Delhi area this represent the first day of spring while closer to the desert, in Jodhpur, 1^st of March is the first day of hot summer.

The week before Holi, in all markets one can buy almost from each stall strong color powders like pink, green, yellow, red and orange. You may think this celebration is especially for kids, but in fact entire families are preparing to have fun playing Holi. Given the fact colors are very strong, even 1 week after Holi, you can still see on the street pink or green skinned Indians wearing the marks of the color fighting.

Besides the color fighting, Holi has a spiritual manifestation that depends from neighborhood to neighborhood. Therefore, on Holi’s eve, people gather around big fires, where they have prepared offerings and flower garlands to the Gods and are doing some sort of rituals.

We joined a neighborhood from Old Jodhpur for Holi’s eve celebrations and it was great!! The tradition there is to do a singing and dancing procession through the whole neighborhood in the honor of marriage. Whoever takes part of it has more chances to get married sooner. Together with couchsurfers from Jodhpur and Australia we got involved in the event and just at the end of it I realized that besides me and Jen (from Australia), no other women was out on the street for the celebration. In fact was more like a ritual for men

Radu was so active in the celebrations that the organizers thanked him many many times for the participation and decorated him with flower garlands.

After 2 weeks we finally start to mind more or less about our “business” for which we came here in India.

Why didn’t we start earlier? Well the reasons are multiple, but they can be summarized in 2 words: culture shock.  I name culture shock all the different things that I use to think are not normal to happen, but which seem to be the lifestyle here: cows, goats, rats, squirrels spending all day long on the street without anybody to make them go aside from the traffic, a lot of dust everywhere inside and outside, people paying 50 Rp (less than 1 euro) to have accommodation in front of the hotel in beds guarded by the hotel’s staff, many cars which are no moment lined up on a lane since everybody has his own rules of circulation or recycling garbage with the help of cows that use it as meals. Adapting to this life it’s a process that took us 2 weeks  :-D

Before telling you the “business” we are having in India, I would like to share with you more impressions about India. I perceive this country to be aggressive in almost all ways, which is not always a bad thing. One’s eyes can enjoy a multitude of strong colors just in the way women dress here: turquoise, green lime combined with red, dark pink, bright yellow or gold orange saris, a lot of golden jewelries, tenth’s of colored bracelets. More than that, no pylon escaped from the big, colorful advertisements in the cities or in-between cities. When it comes to your ears, one can enjoy the delightful chanting dedicated to divers Gods. Also, on the other hand, even if you wear ear plugs, you can still hear a determined Indian who wants to sell you something and keeps repeating sooo loud his speech (coffee man in the train, sellers in the market, auto-rickshaw drivers etc.) and the continuous horning from the street. When it comes to taste, I sincerely confess that food here is delicious, even if it’s aggressively spicy, salted or sweet. With the smell, I think I had the hardest time to adapt. The food’s smell is covered by the petrol smell coming from the thousands of auto-vehicles on the street, cow’s sheet which is rarely cleaned from the street (attracting so many flies), and human urine (because men sometimes just piss on the street).

Even geographically, you can have here all the extremes: aggressively hot in the south while close to Himalaya Mountains it’s extremely cold, both desert and very green places can be found in India. Good or less good things, both are in your face.

Now that I described the way I see India, up to this point, I’ll share with you what we want to do in India. We came to India having planned to explore nature diversity (desert, forest and mountains) but also the spiritual side of India. After overcoming the culture shock together with the hard moments of body weakness (cold or stomach ache) we are ready for camel safari and life in desert, do trekking activities in Daramshala, going in an ashram for Vipassana meditation and Yoga class.

Keep you posted!