Holy Holi Fest Batman!

March 16, 2025

We arrived in the ancient city of Bhaktapur, Nepal just in time for the Holi Festival, a Hindu celebration of the coming of spring and involves color and music and unity. And where you essentially smear strangers' faces with colored chalk and pelt them with water balloons. Good fun!

We ventured to Durbar Square early when a lot of families with younger children were out celebrating, but as the day wore on we saw more and more teens and then the adults started coming out. We were back in our lodgings before the real mayhem started, but I went back with my camera to capture some of the action. But even the latter action wasn’t too crazy.  Apparently the celebration is Bhaktapur is tame in comparison to larger cities like Kathmandu.

It was a very auspicious start to our month in Nepal.

We got in a water balloon battle with these teenagers. It was epic! I would say we won. Baseball is not their thing so they were not terribly accurate with their throws. 

These poor girls were getting pelted really hard with water balloons by a bunch of teen boys. It was unclear to me if they knew them or not, but I hope so although even so it was pretty brutal with a few headshots that looked like they really hurt. . I did see two police officers watching and laughing so I guess all is fair and love and Holi. I later asked a tour guide and he said, "yes, it is okay if they throw water balloons hard at girls, but only on this day of the year". Nice, great way to demonstrate the unity that Holi is all about. 

In the early evening things started getting rowdy.....

Here is a short video of our Holi Festival experience.