We choose to stay in Agra and make the 45 minute drive to Mathura for the festival on the day of. There isn’t much else to do in Mathura and we try to not go room hoping everyday if possible. Holi is a major holiday here so the trains and buses don’t run reliably. The easiest thing was to bargain with a taxi driver. We ended up paying $24 for a taxi. A good decision as we couldn’t even get a train home.
Holi is also known as the Festival of Colors, Festival of Spring and Festival of Love. It signals the arrival of spring and the blossoming of love. It’s a day to meet others, play, laugh, forgive and repair broken relationships. There are many myths related to the origin of the story but the main theme is it’s a holiday to celebrate Vishnu. I choose to come to Mathura as it’s the birthplace of Lord Vishnu and the mecca for this celebration as well as the biggest party around.
We got dropped off a few blocks from the main temple and walked our way through an ever growing crowd. Everyone was hugging, shaking hands, throwing colors and rubbing colors all over each other. Some people had buckets of water and water guns and the entire place was chaos. The highlight was the Shree Dwarikadhish Temple. We arrived just as they stopped allowing people in but we met a cool security guard who let us sneak by. Inside everyone was singing and dancing. So glad we didn’t miss that. We got caught once again taking dozens of foreigner selfies. We knew in advance that the guys could get a little handsy with females but for the most part they were well behaved. A few would go too far and my self restraint was tested a few times but nothing too bad. We had met a guy from Denmark at our hotel the day before and he met up with us here so between the two of us no one gave us any problems. The older generation of guys were quick to scold the younger ones who got too frisky as well. We plan to meet our new friend up north later in the trip. We spent several hours dancing in the street and laughing with strangers. Such a beautiful day. This isn’t something I recommend for a single female to do alone but grab a friend and make sure to experience it. This is something that has been on our bucket list for a while. The video is going to be so fun to watch. We have been looking at the footage all night and laughing hysterically. Tomorrow we wrap up our time in Agra with a visit to another bucket list destination, the Taj Mahal.
A side note: We have both experienced Dehli Belly to some degree, probably cause we are eating anything and everything and not being overly cautious. Even while our bellies were hurting we continued to eat. It’s one of our favorite things to do while traveling so we will just man up and push through it. We have never had stomach problems while traveling before but knew coming here with our eating habits it would happen. Alyssa ate a famous flavored icy drink called Gola at a night market probably made with faucet water. And well I eat anything not moving and somethings that are so I don’t know where my problems came from. It’s all part of the game!
