Holi Day - Not just another day in India

Gavin Moffat
Mar 9, 2023
1 min read

7 and 8 March is the Holi Festival in India and we started the day by visiting The Golden Temple early. After that we were headed to our office for the day when our auto driver asked if we'd like to visit his family for Holi Day. Of course, being who we are we said, hell yes.

It wasn't just his family, it was his FAMILY. We were guided (paraded) around his relatives and met about 50 to 60 different family members at three different locations. Grandparents, brothers, sisters, cousins, the whole shebang.

One of the aspects of celebrating Holi Day is with coloured paint powder being wiped on people's faces, usually gently, on both cheeks and the forehead. In our case almost all of the 60 family members had their chance to put some colour in our cheeks :) resulting in our caked in multi coloured paint. It was nuts. People were WhatsApping family members in other cities to introduce us to them.

Really really nuts for these two South Africans and, what a privilege to be invited into someone’s home, introduced to his extended family and to be offered food from his table.

So, that's how our well planned day was side-tracked. What a sidetracking it was too.