Holi Celebration

All the festivals in India are colorful but Holi is really special among them as it is not only a colorful festival, it’s a festival of colors. It has its own Mythological values on India’s rich culture but to be very honest it always surprises me with its spirit. In a Holi day, entire day you will hear “Holi hai bhai holi hai, burra na mano holi hai” and literally speaking no one does mind when you put “Gulal” on them, whether you know or don’t know the person. This really happens. This year I spent my Holi with a group of people whom I hardly knew before, but now when I look back, I must say 11th of March, 2009 I spent my one of the best Holi ever. This is the spirit of Holi. This is the day when people come together; make new friends and old friends refuel their friendship.

The day started very early for me rather for all of us. We planned to go Ananda Valley which is on Nasik Highway. The trip was organized by my elder sister and her office colleagues; I just joined them with two of my close friends. Almost the entire group was unknown to me but we came to know each other very soon. We started our holi in the bus itself. Everybody put Gulal on others and within minutes the bus turned into a color palette. The atmosphere in the bus was magical full of different fragrances of Gulal.

We took our breakfast in the bus and reached Ananda Valley with lot many expectations. On first look I was disappointed with the entire resort as I expected lot more greenery there. But the fact is all these resorts are best place to visit in monsoon time. So now in the spring time we cannot get any such scenic beauty.

In the resort they have lot many team building games. Those games were really good but I was eyeing on the start of playing Holi with water colors. In the games, we enjoyed a lot, we played cricket also. Unfortunately my team lost the match to the other team. After the cricket match I could not resist myself and put some colors on Sourav’s face. Then all of a sudden we all started playing with water and colors. This fun didn’t last long as group leader Abhishekh suggested to have the lunch first, so we stopped rather postponed our plan till lunch.

Lunch served there was really good, though personally I feel there is nothing good in eating veg food, but actually I enjoyed the real north Indian dishes there.

After lunch we went to the rain dance area and started playing with all sorts of colors and water. They switched on the showers and some music also. I thought rain dance would be a great fun, but the fact is the way they planned the whole thing was not at all encouraging. It was really boring. Still we make full use out of it.

After the rain dance we got ourselves freshen and yes we all were really tired. But when the event manager came and ask for trekking then we jumped up again and went for a new sort of adventure. The trekking part was also really good, going on to the hill top and taste the essence of nature in this manner was a fabulous experience. After watching the sunset from hilltop we came down and started our journey back to Pune.

While returning back Abhishekh was asking about the rating of the trip. I gave it 3 out of 5. Actually I wanted to rate it higher but the problem was “Thoda rang bach gaya tha” and you know in a Holi day “rang bachna!!!!!”