Holi fest and elephant fest 2012 Jaipur loladayonholiday

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So we left Mumbai and headed to the next stop which was Jaipur. This was to see our main reason for coming to India the Holi festival. Holi festival is basically a huge party to welcome in spring where everyone chucks coloured paint, drinks bhang lassi and gets drunk. For a lot of indian men who seem to love a good grope of any western girl, I can only imagine this is like Xmas new years and their birthday rolled into one. The day before holi fest is the elephant festival, where loads of elephants, camels and horses are all decorated, possibly against their will and paraded in front of India’s media, a good helping of tourists and a load of Indians keen to party. We got a tuk tuk from our hotel to the event a few hours early as we heard on a tip off that it gets busy and all the good seats go. Probably in hindsight 3 hours early was a bit over the top.

We decided to go and get a drink after watching a man paint his elephant and look at us confused as to why we were there so early.



We went to the nearby mall for some air con. The mall was almost as bad as the galleria in Hatfield, with nothing in either of us needed or wanted but was saved by having a Subway. Once we had finished we went back to the polo ground to see if the festival had started, still 2 hours early! Once we got in more whiteys had turned up so we at least knew we were in the right place. Some nearby helpers informed us that we could sign up for a free elephant ride, free tshirt and a chance to play holi (chuck paint around) while riding an elephant. This was good, they said the magic word FREE and we trusted this wasn’t like the usual Indian free where you have to pay 2 seconds later. The man came along with the clipboard to sign us up. Sorry sir we are full DAMN missed it by one place. I guess we should of not gone to get a drink but it wasn’t a disaster overall. Some stupid tourists had got our place and they were English. Bloody tourists!!! The event is set up clearly to attract tourists from the special seating to the events they can participate in and the commentary. All through the day there was a kind of a hypnotic feel to the commentary where the announcer would say things like. ‘This is a wonderful time you are having today at this amazing event’ So this review maybe influenced. Bang on four the event started and elephants came from a big white wall hiding them. The designs on some of their poor faces was amazing and the colours were great, some tusks even had lights on for when it got dark.

To stop us feeling guilty we agreed that they are going to do this regardless if we are here so we might as well enjoy it. With our questionable reasoning for coming to terms with the treatment of these animals for our pleasure we continued the day amazed and amused. After about 40 mins the standard annoying behaviour started to come in to play that you can expect anywhere in the world. People standing up blocking the view for everyone, people standing up and getting told to get out the way and sit down and people standing up getting in the way. Did I mention that people were blocking the view!!! After 50 mins all hell broke loose as the crowd basically said ‘I think this event would be better if I could be so near to the elephants i can smell them’ The crowd ran on to the polo ground, past the hugely outnumbered security, who tried their best to look like it was worth having them there, and got a good old close up. This reminded me of a pitch invasion at a football match. Brilliantly chaotic and it just summed up India really. After this happened Laura and I spotted our friends who we met on the slum tour in Mumbai who looked healthy still with no signs of any infectious disease picked up from the tour, so we made our way over to say hello. Doing this turned us into a bad tourist as we kind of forgot that there were some good tourists still sitting down watching the chaos on the pitch. These good tourists proceeded then to tell us off for standing up and blocking their view. After that we went onto the ground to see if we could get some better pics of the elephants. Laura then got scammed by a henna girl who didn’t do it properly and just stamped a pattern onto her while demanding over 100 ruppees (not a lot at home but a lot here).

After all that excitement we went to get a tuk tuk to get ammo and outfits for holi fest the next day. We wanted plain cheap white suits, a load of paint and water guns. The rickshaw driver was a young guy but good fun as he had all us four crammed in his tiny tuk tuk singing holi songs. Laura was his favourite so she had to go at the front with her arm round him. Tart!! He took us to a few stalls selling paint and guns, we loaded up. Getting clothes was harder as the standard con here is taking tourists to their friends shops which pays them or gives them free clothes. After denying a sari we went to another place and bought some trousers, they were girls but two of the three People wearing them were female so it was fine. The one thing it seems Indian shop keepers can’t get their head around is that the need for a sari in England is not huge. The hotel was very good hot shower, tv toilet that flushed and comfy bed. We invited our friends up for a meal in the restaurant which after a days test we decided was safe to eat at. That was it for the Day early night as an early stArt the next day for holi.<del></del>




Jonny

Loladayonholiday.com

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