Pushkar, March 8

Happy holi!

Today is a special day in India. It is holi, the paint festival. It started yesterday, just after sunrise. We climbed to a little hill top temple where we watched the sun set. Drumming could be heard inside the temple, the rhythm getting more and more frantic until it suddenly stopped. Then a guy with a purple face appeared from the door. It had begun.

Today one would say that the whole village had gone mad, but that's impossible since most people here were already wacky to start with. The village square was full of people dancing to techno music, while explosions of coloured powder burst into the air. Joining the crowd I was 'attacked' by several people smearing my face with different colours of paint. Others were shooting water guns, to make the paint flow. And flow it did. Over everything and everybody. Soon the whole village was covered in paint. The dogs and cows included.

I didn't travel a lot in the last couple of weeks. Recovering from the last food poisoning (see my former blog entree) and still feeling weak, we arrived in Pushkar from Jaipur four days ago, after a short visit to Ajmer. Pushkar is built around a small lake, where Lord Brahma is said to have accidentally dropped a lotus flower. The village contains a Brahma temple, one of the very few in the world (the god has so little temples because of a curse by his consort Sarasvati; the cause of this matrimonial dispute eludes me). It is an especially holy place. It is also a former hippy colony with its own ashram full of weird people (not necessarily weird in a negative way). There's meditating, singing, yoga, juggling, snake charming, dog taming, cow evading and ritual cleansing at the ghats (stone stairs that lead to the lake). All is very entertaining to watch, especially at sun set. Unfortunately, the ghats are also heavily "pigeonated": covered in shit. And you have to leave your shoes behind (wearing shoes is not allowed in holy places).

Our visit to the Brahma temple ended in an overall photo-shoot though. Every Indian family wanted to have a group photo with the three foreign (blonde) tourists. We made a lot of friends that day...