Welcoming Spring, The Holi Way

Well here it is, our second year attending Holi: The festival of colors!! I have been so excited to go, we had so much fun last year, to view those pictures click here. Since we hit a few bumps on the road last year, we had everything figured out so this year we experienced everything they had to offer. We left super early and got lunch to go from India Palace, when we arrived at the Krishna Temple in Spanish fork, we found an amazing parking spot by the llamas (instead of 2 miles away ...) We had a wonderful pic nic on a grassy hill over looking the festivities. Then we had plenty of time to enjoy the grounds, play with and feed the llamas and dance to their Krishna rock band before the ceremony and count down to the throwing of the colors. Below is what we saw as we were driving to the temple. All of these lovely photos are courtesy of Bethy and Reece Madison, I didn't bring my camera to this one, I left it to the professionals.

Last year we arrived after the main throwing of the colors, but this year I made sure to be right in the middle of the action. It was quite the experience! As soon as the countdown reached one, huge walls of chalk encircled me in complete darkness, I could not see a thing! The chalk is scented so the immense colored cloud smelled of roses and incense. I wore sunglasses and a handkerchief in attempt to protect my eyes, nose and mouth, the sunglasses were somewhat effective, the handkerchief on the other hand, did nothing. The chalk is cold so when it hits your skin, for a brief moment it feels as if it is wet, it is quite a unique sensation.

We had noticed by observing other people, that when you participate in the massive throwing of the colors, you end up turning a nasty dirty brown color because all the chalk mixes together. So we made sure to save a few bags of chalk, we each had three bags, so we could design the way we looked and to keep the splashes and sprays of colors that look so cool.

We tried some of their mango lemon beverage, it was very refreshing! When it was time to go we could brush of most of the chalk from our clothes, it looked cool to see the chalk in the sunlight as we took turns hitting each other.

And this is how she does it, shes the best! Afterward we got all cleaned up, which felt sooo nice after being soooo dirty, and got frozen yogurt at Red Mango and watched the very colorful and artsy film, The Fall, we felt that movie matched the mood of the whole day. It was a fun, festive and unique way to welcome Spring!