Sunday, March 28, 2010

Holi Festival

As many of you know there is a Hindu Krishna Temple in Salem, UT.  They have many festivals throughout the year.  This weekend was the Holi Festival, also known as the festival of colors.  It is basically a festival to celebrate Spring.  They used to throw ground up flowers but that has gotten too expensive so they throw colored and scented corn starch.

There is about an hour long ceremony with chanting, dancing, and an explanation of the festival for the thousands of people who are there, not because they are observant Hindus, but because it is a pretty good party.  There is a countdown from 20 and then the colors are shared.  They are thrown in the air, or patted onto the people near you.  Hugging is highly encouraged as peace is a big part of the festival.

 

Holi Festival 001 hillside before colors

Holi Festival 129 hillside with colors

Holi Festival 141 pink out

Holi Festival 056 couple in sagebrush

Holi Festival 067 little kid

3 comments:

David said...

looks very cool. I did not even know there was a Salem UT.

Anonymous said...

You should have told us about this when you were here this week!

Michael said...

you should have invited us to come along.....I can remember the first time I saw all those people in Spanish Fork colored up like that and I could not figure out what they were up to....