Holi festival is India's most exuberant Hindu festival and falls on the full moon in Feb/March.It's a time when people join nature in whipping off their winter coats and revelling in the arrival of spring.People greet each other with bright colours-everyhing from a cheeky smearing of pink powder on someones face to a veritable deluge of multi-coloured-dyed water mercilessly thrown from buckets.
Down south not many people celebrate this festival which we found out a few days ago.We have been looking forward to this day the whole of our journey so we decided to rent some motorbikes and hopefully find some northerners somewhere in the surrounding villages.
After an hour of 'trying' to drive about on India's dusty roads a young Indian lad speeds past us on his bike his shirt covered in paint.We beep,shout and catch his attention and the rest is history.
He takes us to his family home where there are about 20 family members dancing, singing, splashing paint and powder all over each other whilst loud western music pumps from the old crackly speakers in the background.
On arrival I am too scared to drive down the steep hill into the house so I let the lad drive.He crashes it straight into the washing line of sheets and rips the front panel of the bike off....too much to say about this situation but I ended up paying 60$ repairs,being verbally abused by the motorbike renter and having a stressful hour of hard barganing so as not to pay for a whole new bike.Leanne keeps telling me not to pay and use my insurance but I cant tell her in front of the lady that I have no bloody driving licence.
Back to the party.The family take us round the back away from the women and give us some beers,whisky and Indian spicy soup.We are splattered in paint,powder and buckets of water-good job my camera bag is waterproof.Leanne's camera is drenched, Sorcha's Iphone is drenched and the floor is becoming a muddy swamp.It's boiling hot and humid and we are sweating and smelly dancing in the garden to Akon(the Indian's favourite arist at the minute lol).
The women and young girls are running about,cleaning,washing,pulling water from the well,cooking whilst the men and boys party with us.We decide to send the boys to buy some alcohol so that Leanne can make them cocktails.We get mint,sugar,vodka and soda and Leanne whips up mojitos.The Indian's cannot believe mint goes in with alcohol and start putting it in their whiskies and rum.
We don't drink too much that day,probably only 3 or 4 drinks each but we are high on happiness.It was a great day and after arriving at 11am we never left till 10pm.
Today is the day after holi day and we decide to 'take a day off' India. We sleep in, go for a nice breakfast of toast and boiled eggs,upload our pics onto facebook which annoyingly takes 1min per photo,eat pizza,fries,drink coca cola and have a lazy day.
The sit ups are coming along nicely, we are doing 150 a day and good news we found scales AND although I thought I must be putting on the kilos I have lost 2 kilos the last 6 weeks! I think it must be stress..lol
Leanne leaves tomorrow I cn't believe she has been here 1 month already.Time has flown.I am secretly jealous she will have a nice bed,A/C,music,salad,the esplanade and normal life!
I am so excited to get back to Cairns.Hopefully I can get a job based flying out of Cairns and get back into a routine.All the time I was there I moaned about Cairns and how I'm over it and now I can't wait to get back to the place!If I have learnt anything on this trip so far the main things are to appreciate what a beautiful part of the world I live in, realise who my real friends are and not take anything for granted.I am excited to get back and watch my good mates Richie and Carrie get married, welcome Jodie and Marty's little baby into the world(mega excited!!!) and spend quality time with my real friends that I have missed.I am going to concentrate on getting my drivers licence before July next year, save up to fly my parents over in 2013 and then hopefully save up to buy my own home in Cairns!
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