The adventures of Trent

I love this country

G'day all,

Hope all is well. So yeah, as you can tell, India has grown on me. I swear every week here there is a public holiday or a bandh or some sort of religious festival happening...meaning that I'm working like a 4 day week every fortnight ;)

The latest festival we just had last weekend is Holi. The official explaination of holi is;

Holi (Hindi: होली) or Phagwah (Bhojpuri) is a popular, Hindu spring festival, observed in India, also called the Festival of Colours. In West Bengal, it is known as Dolyatra (Doljatra) or Boshonto Utshob ("spring festival").
On the first day, bonfires are lit at night to signify burning Holika.
On the second day, known as Dhulandi, people spend the day throwing colored powder and water at each other. The spring season, during which the weather changes, is believed to cause viral fever and cold. Thus, the playful throwing of the coloured powders has a medicinal significance: the colours are traditionally made of Neem, Kumkum, Haldi, Bilva, and other medicinal herbs prescribed by Āyurvedic doctors. A special drink called thandai is prepared, sometimes containing bhang (Cannabis sativa). People invite each other to their houses for feasts and celebrations later in the evening.

My definition however, is thats its a day where you get to cover each other in a whole bunch of colourful powder. Here is a photo of us just starting holi in our house. We were mixing the colours with water and putting them in water bombs in preparation to go to the other trainee houses and hammer them.



Although it didn't really work out like that. The other trainee's wouldn't let anyone in their house so we played holi in the street. But we weren't that smart and just went for it inside. So below is a photo of all of us after a day of holi in our house that we sort of trashed and covered in colours.....



Even though we didn't take bhang, and it took until sunday afternoon to get to the pub, overall holi was fun as. It ranks up there with Diwali last year when we got to blow shit up for 3 days straight ;)

So apart from holi, India is rocking at the moment. I've got 3 months 2 days of my traineeship left. I turn 25 on Sunday......in which we're going to Manipal for the weekend to chill out on the beach and on Monday the world cup starts...which pretty much means India will stop every time there is an Indian match on and will all simultaneously be disappointed when Australia beats India at some stage during the world cup.... Car'n the Aussies ;)

Until next time, happy birthday Mum, Dad, Ebonie, Uncle bill and soon to be Brea....and G'day to all at home.....

Cheers and Beers
Trent

posted by Trent @ 2:53 PM