The HOLI festival halts plans…

After joining with my tour group (Thank goodness!) we drove to Agra, one of the Mughal capitals aka where the Taj is. We left EARLY. got here EARLY. 

Now, there are lotsa festivals in India, due to the many various religions all throughout. I’m in northern India, which is mostly Hindu (like most of India) and there’s 2 MAJOR ones for Hindus: Holi (in Feb/March) and something else (in Nov). Just my luck, the day my tour is to begin is HOLI.. meaning, I can’t do my tour..

Basically the story is:

There was this king. He demanded that his son worship him. His son refused. He son instead worshipped Krishna. This pissed the king off so he decided to burn his son to death. His son and daughter, Holika. Well, while Holika burned to death, the son miraculously survived! (basically sayin’ “boo’ya- Krishna’s the man” to his dad)

So now, the Hindus in Northern India celebrate the sacrifice of Holika by painting their faces, dancing & drinking heavily in the streets; throwing color dyes at people—and sometimes their own feces (aka poop)!!

 So…

We left our hotels for Agra extra early to avoid the color dyes/feces/traffic… get to the hotel in Agra at 830am and we’re like:

“K, let’s go see the Taj!”

“um… no. you can’t today. Must stay inside”

“what?! We paid for a tour, we want to tour”

“you don’t understand, you can’t go outside. They will attack you”

“Pshah. No they won’t… let’s at least go walk around a bit..”

“No! You can’t!! They will throw their feces at you!”

(weird….)

The 2 Venezuelan ladies I’m on the tour with wanted to at least walk around the corner. As long as I was with THEM, not alone, then fine.

We get about 20 feet when naked toddlers start begging us for food from their tents on the side of the road.

A man standing in the middle of the road lurks around & curiously is digging inside his pants for, what I fear, some feces to throw our way. And I get yellow dye chucked at me. We walk back to the hotel.

So, now all these foreigners are locked inside our hotel, being safely protected and guarded from the pooh & color paint.

Hopefully we get to travel around tomorrow….