Holi

The 28th February is the festival of colour, aka Holi, in Nepal. And the Neapli's don't go halfway when it comes to Holi.

The main aim of the day is to cover any person within sight with colour. This is mainly done by water and powder. Walking down the street you are liable to ambush. Literally, as many children stand on their balconies or roofs and throw water balloons at you. As the only white people from here to Pokhara, we had no chance of being subtle.

All 15 volunteers were in Gorkha or Laxmi Bazaar and had stayed overnight and so the day began with preparation. You can buy the coloured powder in a lot of places in the week leading up to Holi and so we filled balloons first with powder and then with water. We also filled one litre water bottles with powder / water and made a hole in the top in a form of water pistol. We then turned on each other.

So, already covered in colour (most of us were wearing white t-shirts to get the full effect) and now without water balloons we braved the streets of Gorkha. 100m out of the house and we had our first battle. We had only just stepped out of the house when they headed towards us. This then worked out to our advantage as we joined forces and they knew how Holi worked a lot better than us.

Everyone throws coloured water from the rooftops but the people on the ground still have powder. Literally handfuls of powder. This they smear over you. About 10 of them attack one person and cover them in powder, which dries and leaves you with a different coloured face. Think lions attacking a gazelle and you get the idea.

So, after an hours circuit around Gorkha we returned to the house looking slightly different. Everyone had red/blue/green faces, hair was matted and mine was a nice shade of purple, everyone was soaked. The white t-shirts were very colourful and generally it had been brilliant.

Everyone who is on the street gets into the spirit of Holi and goes out expecting to get covered. I would like to think that we gave as good as we got but, despite being 15 of us, I doubt it. You really need powder instead of water to attack people with, but we were always going to be No. 1 targerts. To the point where one of the teachers at school on Tuesday mentioned that he had heard about us going round Gorkha. So, basically we didn't have a chance.

My hair was still purple after washing it twice and only eventually, after leaving conditioner in for 15minutes and washing it four times did it fade. I can only say I'm very lucky my hair isn't (or wasn't) blonde.