Asian Walkabout

“Are you going to Holi?” We ask Suni, the friendliest, slightly bashful member of the group of six Nepalese guys working at the Oasis Café next to our tree-house hotel in Rishikesh.

He shakes his head. “No. They use chemicals, you know?” He screws up his face in disgust. “Ruins your clothes. Some of them don’t come out.”

“Oh,” we say, with big, naïve tourist eyes. I personally still want to be covered in Holi colors, fluorescent oranges, pine greens and 1980s shades of pink. I want to look like a psychedelic lizard, a subhuman species from the planet Magenta.

I don’t think Seth was as into looking like something out of a poorly-done Nickelodeon show.

Holi is an annual spring tradition in India and Nepal. Its name comes from the demoness Holika, who is ritually burned in bonfires the night before the holiday. According to the oft-creative Wikipedia, this "festival of colour is celebrated in all over the country with great festivity and joy. On this day, people...gather together in a common place where they play it with gay abandon." Which is to say, they gaily smear lead-based colored powders on one another's faces and clothes, making sure to douse tourists as much as possible. They also dance, squirt water on one another, and party for a good 20 hours before getting back to work.

It wasn’t bad. At first.

By the time we crossed the bridge, small brigades of Indian men had discovered us and done their best to douse us in powders and a mauve liquid that must have been made of lead-based spray paint. Hugging strangers is perfectly legitimate on Holi, so we both received heartfelt bear hugs after having our faces smeared with powder by wet hands. One old, fat man saw me and embraced me like I was his long-lost granddaughter. Several times. “Haaaappy Holi!” He kept exclaiming.

Soon, our look was complete. We were 100% Holi’d-out, parrots from an acid trip bearing human form, tourists-cum-canvases, the masterpieces of drunk Indian men and little kids with spray bottles. The mystery paint oozed up our noses and into our eyelids, causing a chemical stinging sensation. Concerned, we warded off revelers to wash off in the Ganga.

The powders came off easily. The Mauve Industrial Liquid did not, fading to the color of a Gorbachavian birthmark on our faces, necks and chests. A nice woman nearby passed us some black, foul-smelling soap. After we had both scrubbed it all over our faces, twice, someone informed us that it was laundry soap and would leave little cuts all over our skin.

Luckily, we came out of the experience relatively unscathed. Part of the left side of my hair is still pink. This is fine in India, where sheep, goats, and anything else unlucky enough to have white fur is also still looking pretty neon. I saw a man walk a pink dog down some steep stairs in Varanasi the other day. The same potent mauve liquid also clings to the fronts of rickshaws and third-class India Railways trains, baking to permanence in the driving sun.

Another year. Another Holi. And in 2 days, when we head to Bangkok, a few weeks of explaining that the pink hair isn’t a punk thing. It’s a Holi thing.