Holi Festival in Rajisthan

After about a week of basically doing nothing but sitting on the beach, boogie boarding, and eating and drinking in Goa, we decided it was time to go back to India. Goa was great! It was relaxing and there was good music and we met a few new friends. I can see why people can get stuck there. Sky and I took a 30 hour train to Jaipur Rajasthan, starting on the 9th. The ride was really nice. We met a couple from London going to the same place and we have been exploring the city together. We also met some Indian friends that helped us get a good cheap place to stay. Yesterday, 11th was the Holi Festival. It is the festival of colors and basically the city closes down and everyone runs around throwing colored powder or water all over eachother. Tuesday we were walking around in the street near our hotel and just happened to stumble across a family having a small party. They invited us in and put color all over us and then we danced around to Indian music for a couple of hours. It was so much fun. They gave us snacks and told us to come back the next morning but we all slept in instead. Yesterday was the real Holi Festival and it was quite different. Everywhere we walked people would come up to us and smear our faces with color. Everyone wanted to shake our hands and give us hugs. We started off in a family neighborhood and we got invited into a temple for tea. The people were all so friendly and welcoming. We met a 65 yr old Lady named Kay, from Germany, who we kidnapped into our crew. Then we wanted to see all the real action of Holi and so we jumped into a taxi and found it. We went to a busy street and got more than we asked for. There were a lot of drunk men, little kids and hardly no women in sight. The crowds of people would surround us with there hands all over our faces. Some of the stuff that they had was really nasty and it was very overwhelming. It got old pretty fast, especially when Carli and I kept on getting grabbed by the men. We eventually just jumped into a taxi and went back to our hotel area. Overall Holi was really fun, and we ran into mostly great people. Today we are going to tour the city a little bit and make plans to move on to somewhere else in Rajasthan. So far the desert here reminds me of the desert around Boise. Next we are heading for the Thar Desert for the sand dunes and camel treking. :)