Palamariu Family Blog

Just to let you know, we posted some more pictures from our travels trough India on Picasa.

Enjoy!!

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.