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Pokhara, Nepal – Up at 5 a.m. to see Rich off on his journey. I told him that I would leave him a note at the hotel and another one in Kathmandu telling him where to find me. He got on his bus to start his trek and I wandered up to the restaurant to write and watched the sun come up and light up the mountains. I rented a bike and went to the lakeside to sort everything out with Ram regarding our departure the next morning.
When that was done, I biked the 5 to 6 kilometers up to the opposite side of old Pokhara. This is what the town looked like before tourism and electricity arrived and there was a marked difference. It looks like a mountain village, Squaw Valley, California kept springing to mind. Narrow streets with your basic two-storey buildings. I really did get the feeling I was in Lake Tahoe with the mountains rising up behind the buildings, but this was not Tahoe. This was Nepal, the tiny mountain kingdom.
After a long ride, I went back to the hotel and had a beer, which floored me. I slept away most of the day and woke up at dusk, just in time to ride into town and get the backpack I would be using on the trek from Ram. I picked up a pair of wool gloves for 70 rupees, figured I might need a pair of those at 3000 meters.
 Pokhara, Nepal – Up this morning and headed straight to the German Bakery down on the corner. We had discovered this place the previous morning and it was a God send. They served tea and coffee and served the best pastries, plus we could sit there admiring the mountains as we ate. After breakfast, it was off to the immigration office to sort out our trekking permits.
One and a half hours and 500 rupees later, we left only to return at 4 p.m. to pick up our passports. Rich got a three-week permit while I only got a two week. He was going to do the 19-day Annapurna circuit all the way around, while I was going to do an 8-day trip up into the Himalayas and fly back. That way I could get into the Kathmandu Valley faster in order to see more of the country in our 30-day period. We cleaned up and finally headed into town at 1:30 checking out all the camping rental shops for we both needed to rent down jackets and backpacks for our respective treks.
As we were walking along, I walked down to the lakeside where I met this Nepalese dude standing there. I started talking to him and he asked me if I was going trekking and whether I needed a guide. I had been towing with the idea of taking a guide/porter because I really did not feel like carrying my own pack up the tallest mountains in the world when I could afford to have someone do it for me. I asked for a price and told Ram, the Nepalese guy, I think about it and talked to him the next day. The price I negotiated was 280 rupees per day, $4 and 60 cents, plus another 300 rupees for him to climb down the mountain after I had flown home.
Rich and I wandered through the shops all day again and Rich rented the pack and coat he needed for his departure the next day. Back to immigration at 4 o’clock to get the passports, then back into town again for dinner, I went and talked to Ram again to confirm we would be leaving on the 18th, but then there was a power outage and I managed to lose Rich when it got dark. Grabbed the dinner at a lakeside restaurant, then headed back to the hotel to talk to Rich while he packed.
 Pokhara, Nepal – Up at 7:00 a.m. and walked out on to the deck of our hotel only to see the most breathtaking, stunning view of the snow-capped Himalayas. Those two days of bus riding were worth seeing the view from our hotel deck, it was stupendous. Sat in our hotel restaurant complete with bay windows facing the mountains all morning drinking tea. We headed over to the bank to change money but when they gave us the Nepalese rupees, they were all in 1000 rupee notes, no one in Pokhara would ever have change for that. So, we headed to the next counter to change down the notes. I told the guy I wanted all the notes in denominations of 50 rupees or less and that is when the fun began. He opened his steel container and began to pool out bale after bale of money. Yes, this happened to us in India but this was even more fun. He ran out of 50s, so he began to put bales of 10s and 5s upon the counter. I opened by bag pack and just began filling it up with out newest version of real monopoly money.
One rupee is worth 2 cents. Rich saved a whole bunch of 1s, so he could wall paper part of his bathroom. We headed back to the hotel and took pictures of ourselves with our new found wealth stocked on the table. We had asked Babu Ram to organize some bikes for out so we could go cycling through the old city but 15 minutes after we left the hotel, I managed to run over a broken bottle and give myself a flat. We walked back to the hotel, dumped our bikes and decided to head the opposite direction towards the lake. Pokhara sits on a lake and the mountains go jetting down steeply into the water, very similarly to the landscape in Scotland. It is really beautiful that way.
We headed towards the lake side but it took us almost three hours to get actually to the lake because we got stuck in the various Tibetan Craft and T-shirt embroidering shops. Stopped for lunch when we could just barely see the water of the lake and I had Enchiladas, real Mexican food for the first time in five months. Nepal is known for their food mainly because they cook Western dishes really well and everyone coming from India usually goes on a feeding frenzy when they arrive here. The food is also a nice break right between eating Indian for 2-1/2 months and starting Thai and Southeast Asian food.
More shopping after lunch and before we knew it, it was getting dark. We stopped for a beer but skipped dinner for we had been eating our way through town. By the time we got to the hotel, it was pitch black outside and we were both pretty tired after out shopping spree. I ended up buying a silver bracelet for 80 rupees and a carved wooden mask for 200 rupees.
Belahiya, Nepal – Sunauli in India, Belahiya on the Nepal side. We woke up at 6 a.m. and headed over to the immigration office to get our visas and get stamped into Nepal. We arrived at the immigration office and the dudes were standing outside watching us approach from the Nepal side not the Indian side. Evidently, it did not phase them because they issued our visas, no problem but one officer did mention sarcastically that there was not an extra $10 included with our visa payments for him.
From immigration, it was to the bank to change money. US $1 equals 50 Nepalese rupees. The bank was also changing over Indian rupees, so it is technically illegal to take them out of India and the bank people were changing them over without any transaction record, imagine that. We had one more bus ride to endure to Pokhara before we could truly begin to enjoy Nepal. Our bus pulled up a little later and there was the mad dash to get a seat. When the bus pulled up, there was a swarm of Nepalese boys, each one trying to get your pack out of your hand to carry it to the bus’ roof for the extortionate amount of 10 rupees.
We boarded the bus and after sitting in my seat for about two seconds, I came to the realization that all Nepalese people must be under 5 feet height because my feet were not touching the floor due to the fact that the seat in front of me was so close the my kneecaps prevented the soles of my shoes from moving any lower plus there was not enough room to put our daypacks under our feet, so we tossed them into the aisle along with everyone else’s packs. The bus was absolutely jam-packed and some of the women with children were given small stools so that they could sit in the aisle of the bus. Our bus finally departed. One thing India and Nepal do have in common is that nothing is ever on time.
Into the Himalayan foothills on one of those narrow winding roads that you always read about in the paper when a Nepalese bus goes over the edge and kills 20. Not 15 minutes after we had began our ascent <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:””; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} p.MsoBodyTextIndent, li.MsoBodyTextIndent, div.MsoBodyTextIndent {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-indent:.5in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>
on this road with no guard rails and major cliff drops, we saw a large truck balanced on a boulder 20 to 30 feet below the level of the road. The truck was surrounded by people who seem to be trying to figure out how to go about getting the truck back up to the road, all this within the first hour of our first Nepalese bus ride.
Our bus was supposed to be tourist bus but it was really half tourist express and half local, so I continued to stop for 20 minutes at a time in most small villages. This was only supposed to be a nine-hour bus ride but at this rate who knew how long it was going to take us. The bus climbed higher and higher, passed the terraced fields, the mountain farmers were tending. Our bus made a few more useless stops, then it began to rain. I thought the monsoon was not until May rain great. Now the bus had a fighting chance to really slide off the road into the river. We drove and drove and drove and more people got on and we drove some more.
Our driver would be driving down into the valleys and it accelerated into a 25 km an hour hairpin turn, then slammed on the brakes just as we started turning plus it was not like all 75 people on the bus could not see the turn. We had all been staring at it for 10 minutes, why accelerate. Rich and I decided it was because the driver did not know which paddle was the brake and which paddle was the gas. So, he just pressed both of them at the same time in order to figure out which was the brake. We descended down into the Pokhara valley and stopped at the checkpoint a little bit out of town. After checking in with the police, the hotel touts started their swarm.
This was different though because they were all really mellow, cordial, and no pressure on you whatsoever. Come to my hotel and if you do not like it, okay was the usual response, so mellow. It was going to take us a few days to get used to this lifestyle. The touts piled on to the bus with us and when the bus finally dropped us off, Rich and I decided to go to the Hotel Riz with a dude named Babu Ram. He was very mellow and after we had checked into our room, I had another well earned beer before crashing out.
 Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India – Up at 6 a.m. and headed down the river for our sunrise boat cruise to see all of the people bathing in the river. We cruised down the river but I was surprised not to see like hundreds of people bathing. There were only about 50 spread out along the length of the river. We did pass a dead cow floating on the river complete with two crows standing on it and the Indians were bathing and putting the river water in their mouth not 50 yards from it.
After our ride, we went and picked up our packs from the hotel, then we were led by a couple of locals through the Varanasi maze to a bicycle rickshaw. Bicycle rickshaw to auto rickshaw to bus station, what a transfer. Found our bus to Gorkahpur and it was leaving immediately for our destination. It was supposed to take five hours but eight hours later after a very bumpy ride due to non-padded seats, we arrived in Gorkahpur.
We de-bused like a deplaning, Rich just a touch nauseous and inquired about a bus to Sunauli on the Indian and Nepalese border. We were directed to the bus, and magically, it was making an immediate departure for Nepal. Once we were on the bus, Rich and I commented on once again the fact that we have been so lucky with buses in India. Virtually, every bus we boarded in 10 weeks was making an eminent departure, had two seats free for us to sit in and space inside the bus for our large rucksacks just like clockwork every time.
This was supposed to be a three-hour ride but there were road works the entire way of the border so of course it took us a lot longer. We arrived at Sunauli outskirts at 8:30 p.m. and hired a bicycle rickshaw to take us into town to the border. We found the immigration post, which looked like any other shop on the street and began exit formalities. The officials started the paperwork, then the head dude started talking to me saying that the office was technically closed and that we should help out the man stamping our passports, aka, given him money.
These boys had already taken away our residence permits and I was annoyed enough as I was from hell bus rides, so I was not about to give anyone any bribes. I just played dumb tourist and to be honest when he first said help out the guy, I seriously thought he wanted me to help him, may be ink the exit stamp for him, what. The head guy told us the Nepal border was closed and they had done us a favor by stamping us out but we just put our packs on and started walking away.
As we were leaving, this dude came over to us and asked if were going to Nepal. He said he knew of a hotel we could stay in on the Nepal side and that he would lead us over there. Being used to the Indian shafting the tourist, I was sort of rude to him as we are to the Indians but this guy was different. He was cordial, laid back, and really friendly. He also looked different from the Indians. His eyes were sloped more like an Asian then an Indian.
He chatted to us and walked us under the immigration barricade on the Indian side. We crossed into no man’s land, then crossed under the Nepalese immigration barricade, even though the border was technically closed. As we crossed, a policeman came running out of the check post there but our Nepalese guide said something to him, which made the policeman just turn around and go back into his booth. Our guide told us immigration opened at 6 a.m. the next day and we could get our 30-day visa there the next morning.
We got to the hotel and I was still suspicious because the guy had been so friendly, but at that time I did not know that all Nepalese people are so cordial and personable. We got a room ate and relaxd at our hotel while I drank my first beer in Nepal while listening to the Beatles – Western music. Even though we were only 500 yards beyond the Nepalese border, I could actually feel the difference.
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India – Our train arrived Muglie at 9.a.m. and we jumped on the bus for one hour ride to Varanasi. We arrived no problem and Rich and I got a rickshaw to the outskirts of the old city. No autorickshaws allowed in there.
We were wondering around the old city looking for this hotel when he went one way and I went another, so now I was on my own. I finally found him at the Shanti Lodge where he had booked us a room with doors opened up onto the sundeck and the view of Varanasi. We rested a bit and then changed 20 US so we would have enough money to get out of the country since we were headed to Nepal the next morning. The Indian rupee became a free floating, fully convertible currency like two weeks before, so the foreign exchange rate had been steadily going up. US $1 was equal to 31 rupees 70 paise.
 Varanasi is known as the holy city on the Ganges and people from all over India bring their deceased relatives of Varanasi to have them burnt on the banks of the Ganges. It is really special prestigious thing to have this done to you. After a nap and a shower, Rich and I were relaxing on the roof when Barry and Kim Stone came over to our table and started talking to us. I had met the two of them on the roof admiring the Taj in Agra. We chatted for a while and I mentioned Rich and I were going to hire a boat and take a sunset cruise down the Ganges. Barry and Kim said they would join us but they would like to stop at the burning ghats on the way down because he was thinking of making a movie about dying.
You see, Barry and Kim are Canadians and he is a movie producer/director. I did not think much about it when I first met them. I would not have known him from the post but I guess he is well-established director. He did like talking about his work too much but he did mention in passing that the film he has made might be going to the Cannes Film Festival and he might have to cut his trip to Nepal short because he would have to fly back and do some work on the film before it went to the next round of judging. He has filmed a pilot episode in Budapest for NBC and the way he was talking, he and Ryan are seem to be pretty good buddies. I think they liked being around us because we had no clues who the hell they were. No questions about the movie business from us, which kept them relaxed. Barry Stone, Oliver Stone, any relation. I will do the research and find out.
The four of us headed down to the burning ghats and watched as the mourners brought the shrouded bodies down the steps, dunk the bodies in the holy waters of the Ganges, then place it at atop the pyre which is a wooden pyramid and settle it. We all stood there and watched, fascinated as these bodies burnt in the fires. We could actually see the skin bubbling and noticed the defined features of the bodies. Like seeing the slaughtering of cows in Uganda, this kept us in trance due to shear morbid curiosity. Rich and I were finishing our trip through the Indian subcontinent that day and here we were at the holiest finishing point in the country – very appropriate.
We moved down the banks the river a bit and found a captain to take us down river in his boat. The boat took us slowly pass the bathing ghats and the marked down to the other end of the city. The Ganges river is so holy to the Indian population and there are certain traditions they have which would disturb Western minds. The Indians do not believe that babies, priests, and white cows should be burnt on the pyres when they die. They consider these things pure enough to just throw the corpses directly into the river. Along with this, all of the people come down to the ghats every morning to bath in the holy waters of the river. Bathing where these corpses are thrown, not my idea of sanitary.
 During our sunset cruise, we did see the body of a dead baby go floating by but it was no as gruesome as I expected it to be.
The boat let us out near the markets and Barry, Kim, Rich, and I grabbed a bite to eat before wandering the narrow streets back towards our hotel. We came across the most amazing Indian treat, dried mango slice just like fruit roll up but the mango does not get stuck in our teeth. We went back to our room and chatted with Kim and Barry some more about Nepal before they left to go to their hotel. Really nice people and they are headed to Pokhara, Nepal as well to go tracking, so may be we will see them over there.
 Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India – We took pictures of each other, the Taj, the reflection of the Taj in my sunglasses, you name it, plus as an added attraction it was cleaning day at the Taj, so they drained the reflecting pool and there were 20 locals scrubbing the green scum at the bottom of the pool. They also had the most interesting type of lawn mower, an ox-powered grass cutter. The oxen were hooked up to a manual grass cuter and were wondering around the grounds, had to take photo of that.
We sat there for most of the day and when I got tired of watching the oxen, I took a quick nap on the lawn. When it started to get really hot, we returned to the hotel, and I sat talking to the managers and Sardar during the heat of the day. Watched the sunset over the Taj from my final time from the roof of the hotel and just vegged on the steps of the hotel waiting to go to the bus station. I was entertained by a wedding procession marching by the hotel, groom mounted atop his white horse with a carnival looking electric-light decoration being carried on the shoulders of some men behind the groom. Since they were going down some side streets and hence needed to keep the carnival light thing juiced with electricity, there were another two blokes behind the fancy light set up, dragging their petrol-powered generator behind them.
Shortly after the procession passed our hotel, I met Rich and we jumped in a rickshaw to the bus station to catch our bus to the train station. We were headed to Varanasi by train, but other travels have told us we could shave 7 hours of our train ride if we travel the one hour on the bus to another station outside of Agra. Sounded like a good idea to us, so we figured out which bus we needed and made it to the train station.
The train journey was like any other night train we would have been, but it was the chai boys at the station that surprised me. We called over one of the chai boys to where we were siting and upon placing our order we were presented our. Rs. 1.50 teas in small earthenware pots rather similar to a potted plant pot. Finished our tea and I took the glasses back to the chai boy so he could use them again later. He looked at me pretty funny. When I tried to hand him the cups, he told me to throw them down to the train tracks. I was flabbergasted that he wanted me to throw the cups away, so just to be sure I made the motions of throwing the cups under the train. The chai boy nodded in the affirmative and as I tossed the cups down into the tracks, I was rewarded with the sound of shattering earthenware.
Even after being in India for 10 weeks, it still was amazing me, disposable earthenware cups, what would they think of next.
 Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India – Up in the morning and headed over to the central telegraph office via bike rickshaw to meet with someone to get the letter we needed. We worked our way up their hierarchical supervisorial system until about an hour later we were sitting in the higher-up’s office in a formal meeting with three of the subordinates we have been dealing with.
Total conference and the dude spoke perfect English and he understood the concept of AT&T direct. No problems. He wrote us a letter saying things like “in your face” to the hotel dudes. Back to the hotel to read during the heat of the day, then over to the Taj for sunset. We wrote postcards and watched the Taj as the sun went down behind us. The Taj is definitely a totally different building at dawn in the daylight and at sunset truly spectacular. The sun went down and the stars were coming out when we decided to go and have another look inside. This time, we had brought our torches. We went inside and they told us it was closed, but we could go inside for 5 minutes anyway.
It was so nice being inside the Taj grounds – alone – there was absolutely no one else in the entire complex save the guards and it was a real treat. We exited the Taj and were making our ways through the ground towards the main gate, when the Australian girl, we were with, spotted the fire flies. I had not seen them since living in Washington D.C. and she had never seen them, so we went running over to where they were and began playing with them. It was a nice touch being alone at the Taj and playing with the fire flies in the gardens before we left.
We hung around the hotel and Rich went to bed early, while I hung out in the lounge with Sardar. I was talking with him and Sardar asked me if I wanted to go to an Indian dance party that was going on not far from the hotel. With nothing else on my agenda that evening, I said yes, and shortly thereafter we were walking through the backstreets of Agra at 11 p.m. at night. Sardar explained that the people were still celebrating Holi and that they would be going on all night.
We turned down this brightly lit street strewn with silver and gold garland over the street. There was a large decorated gateway and a huge outdoor tent not too far behind to the gait. We entered. I got in free because of my sahib status and once again I was the lone white man at yet another Indian festival. People were dancing, music playing, food stalls everywhere, yes, these people were partying and yes all eyes were on me. We walked around for a while, then we headed back to the hotel due to the lack of women.
Sardar and I sat on the roof talking and I found out he gets Rs. 500 a month plus food for working in the hotel. That is not a bad wage at all. He told me that the one habit the westerns have that Indian people find truly offensive is that of our blowing our nose into a piece of tissue and putting it into our pocket that is one the Indians cannot handle.
 Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India – 6 a.m. this morning, there was a knock at the door, it was Emmy, the girl from Santa Cruz, we have met the evening before, waking me up to see the Taj at sunrise. I got up, Rich could not make it and walked over to the Taj gait at 6.30 a.m. where I found Emmy and her buddy Tina from Santa Barbara waiting to go inside. We went in and saw the Taj surrounded in mist, more mysterious looking then ever. The best part about our early arrival is that we have beaten the tour buses there, so we could take pictures of ourselves in front of this beautiful building with no one around.
Back to the hotel to get food and Rich, before the four of us headed to the bus station to go to Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned city, not too far from Agra. An hour later, we arrived in this little town and made the hike up the hill to the city and listed a guide to take us around and he took us through the massive city gait, the largest one in the world, into the main courtyard. Not much to the city, everyone left there because there is not any water anywhere near here. There was a cemetery and a beautifully carved white tomb, I forget who is buried there, but not much more. The tomb definitely had the most intricate lattice work I have seen anywhere in India.
We wandered around the city and the smaller one behind it before tiring of it and heading down to the town to have a look around. We walked about 200 yards down the main market street, but there were so many flies flying everywhere. It made a rather unpleasant experience. I was just waiting for one to fly up my nose or down my throat. 10 minutes later, we made a bee line for the bus station ready to endure the one-and –a half hour ride back to Agra on the local bus.
Emmy and Tina were leaving that evening and as Emmy was flying back to San Francisco in 10 days, she came down to our room and offered to take a bag of our stuff back to California for us. It was like a God send, someone willing to take all the crap we had brought back home for us plus we knew it would get there. Rich took his camel leather bag and the two of us opened our packs and proceeded to fill the thing perfect, off load all our stuff.
A short while later, Rich went downstairs to dial AT&T direct and make a collect call to the states, when he was done, the meter read Rs. 1 and the Indians thought he made a direct dial call, so they told him the bill was Rs. 1,700. They could not for the life of them understands the concept of a collect call and that they would not be charged for the call. Rich blew his top and when I came down, he was about ready to kill the Indians. I took over and started being the diplomat, but two hours later, we had resolved nothing. Rich had long gone to bed except we have managed to get across the concept of collect calls. I ended the negotiations, round I, by telling the Indians that Rich and I would get a letter from the head telecom office in Agra stating the hotel would not be charged.
When I retired upstairs, Rich and I talked for a while and we figured out that the Indians absolutely do not have the same logical thinking process that every other country has. Western minds including Nepalese think of problem through from A to B. The Indian mind goes to A to B, but they come from a completely different direction, say C and no western mind can ever be enlightened enough to ever come close to understanding C. They have such a different logical thinking process and they do eventually reach B via C. It just takes them a lot longer. Their cognitive setup is not the same and even as I write this in Nepal, I am convinced it is an isolated problem in the Indian societies thinking. The Nepalese are all western-minded and I cannot understand how some of their logic cannot cross over the border.
 Agra, the Holi festival, Uttar Pradesh, India – Woke up at 5 a.m. this morning due to the Holi festival music that has been playing at a deafening volume all night long. I got up at 7:30, put on my white shirt I had made for today’s Holi festival and headed out to check out the Taj by morning sunlight.
The Holi festival is a festival held honoring the end of winter and everyone gets into it from about 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. everyone runs around splashing brightly colored paints all over everything and everyone and this blonde sahib wearing an unblemished white shirt is the best target around. I left Rich sleeping and headed down the stairs to go to the to the Taj but the doors to the hotel were locked. The hotelier said I should not go outside and when I questioned him, he said, he could not be responsible for anything that happens to me if I left the hotel before 2 o’ clock. I told him it was okay and at that I was let out of side door of the hotel on to the street. The doors to the hotel would stay locked until the festival was over.
I walked down to the Taj but because it was so early, people were not celebrating quite yet. The Taj Mahal looked like an entirely different building in the morning sunshine, still as amazing and powerful as ever. I stayed there admiring the beauty of the building for an hour or so before heading back to the hotel to see if Rich was awake and Rich had just gotten up and I gave him the report that the kids outside were armed with spray guns, water bottles, and water balloons, full of paint already. At that we left all passports etc. behind and headed downstairs for a quick breakfast before joining the chaos downstairs.
While we were getting ready, one of the guys who worked here in the hotel with a face painted bright purple already started talking to us and we he found that we wanted to go and join the Holi celebration, he took us back into our bathroom and doused us with a bottle of bright purple paint he already mixed. Cool. We were now marked as participants, so everyone could now attack us with paint now that they knew we wanted to play. We left the hotel at 9 a.m. with a Sardar and he let us with the back streets towards his house. These back streets were places we would not have seen without our friend, true local culture and the real Holi celebration. The entire city was celebrating. Most people with various shades of purple, some people would throw colors on you while others squirted us with water pistols filled with paint.
What most people did though was take up pinch of colored paint powder out of their pocket and rub it on your forehead followed by three to four hugs, one on each side like a European kiss. This process also ensured any wet paint you had on yourself was smeared on the chest of the person you were hugging. Dhanyawad and a hand shake and then we would move on. I cannot tell you how many people put bright paint on my forehead but once again we were a showpiece. Other times, we would walk into a small crowd of people and an entire bucket of paint would be poured on the whole lot of us. All of these things going on amid music played all over the city over huge loudspeakers.
We arrived at Sardar’s house where we sat and met his friends and family. We had to stand in the courtyard, so his mother could douse the three of us with blue paint from her porch up on the roof. We sat around and sardar brought a bottle of whisky out which only went around the small circle of people once. They were drinking the stuff like water. After a small snack, we moved outside his house and met some neighbors, then another bottle of whisky appeared. This one went down faster than the last one.
While we were sitting, children and even super old ladies in their sarees came up to us and put paint on our foreheads. We started walking through the narrow streets again and there was paint everywhere. The gutters were all colored purple from the sheer amount of paint coating all the streets and all in them. We came across a group of people dancing, so we had our obligatory dance where the locals got so excited, we were dancing. They started clapping and dancing around us. After the dance, every single person wanted to give us the requisite three hugs but Sardar warded them off of us via his native tongue. It was definitely a good idea having someone who spoke Hindi with us. He went to another friend of Sardar’s house but this gathering looked more formal. It was held in the house’s courtyard and there were many elderly gentleman putting dry paint on each other’s forehead. We were brought in, sat down, and after the paint on the forehead, a tray of cigarettes and bidis were passed around. Chai and snacks offered and politely declined. It was wild.
We left the formal party and went splashing colors on people and danced in the streets. Some people would take the paint powder, mix it with a little water in their hands, then run up to smearing their color of choice all over your face. The tricky players in Holi seem to be the wives, all dressed up in their sarees standing on the balconies over the street. They would stand there poised with a basket of paint, throwing it down on the people below. The only thing is you could not get them back due to their strategic position. After another hour of walking, visiting Sardar’s friends and dancing in the streets, Rich and I were getting really tired, so we left sardar and head it back to the hotel, covered head to foot in assorted colors.
When we arrived back at the hotel around 11:30 and when we went to the roof, the other travelers in the hotel were pretty surprised we had gone out and braved the festival. Most of them just sat on the roof, being spectators. We also found out that no one went and saw the festival we had seen. The ones who did go out, did it without a local as a guide, so they did not get as much out of it.
The clock struck two and poof just like Cinderella’s spell Holi ended. The streets calmed down and people went home to rest. I showered shortly after a return and when I was done, I no longer had purple hair and blue face. The color had been evenly spread all over the floors and walls of our bathroom. Not all of the paint came off as there paints are not totally water soluble but in time with multiple showers, I am sure it will all come off plus I have got a brightly colored button down courtesy of the Holi festival. We get the same festival again in Nepal on the 18th. Now we know we are in for.
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