I remembered the sheen of the rising sun lighting up an ember at the edge of the hills of sand dunes. It was the first thing I saw from where I laid out on a mattress in the open desert. A few feet away from me, I noticed a black scorpion struggling to crawl away. I looked up at our guide with a smile on his face. “Close call,” he told me before breaking into a grin. “They are poisonous but they don’t kill people,” he added. That prevented me from thinking the night we spent in the desert of Jaisalmer was a life-threatening one.
Reveling Holi: the Festival of Colors in Jaisalmer
One by one, myself, Aileen, and the five other Indian travelers we befriended rose up and marveled at the spectacular sunrise. As what we had witnessed during the previous sunset, the rising sun over the desert of Jaisalmer was a picture to behold. It was a rarity finding myself unable to even capture it with my camera. I gazed at it like a lovelorn soul looking at a goddess.
Holee Mubaarak
The youngest of our guides—already an expert camel herder—kick-started the Holi celebration by yelling Holee Mubaarak (Hindi for Happy Holi) before our other two guides started tossing colored powders on us. Before we knew it, we were smudged with pink, yellow, violet, red, and blue colors on our faces.
The Holi Festival is an ancient Hindu Festival known as the "festival of colors." Held predominantly in the Indian subcontinent, it celebrates the victory of good over evil. The manner it was reveled originated from the childhood pranks of Lord Krishna—the reincarnation of Lord Vishnu—of dousing village kids with colored waters.
Occurring every year on the day after the first full moon of March, the Holi Festival coincided with the morning after our magical experience of sleeping on the sand dunes of Jaisalmer.
Our trek back to the city of Jaisalmer was filled with gay episodes, bookending with a bittersweet farewell to our camels—who proved to be lovable creatures of the unforgiving terrain of Rajasthan. I patted mine on the head and heard her make a sound as if acknowledging my gesture of goodbye.
More Colors in Jaisalmer
Although compared to other cities in India such as Vrindavan, Pushkar, Jaipur, and Hampi, the Holi Festival in Jaisalmer appeared more laid-back and intimate. There were no mosh-pit types of crowd gatherings on the streets. Rather, locals paraded on the streets in waves of varying numbers from a handful to a couple of dozen.
Still, I couldn’t deny feeling the unique festive vibe of the Holi. After wiping the blotches of color powder on my face, I joined our group on the streets of Jaisalmer with a clean slate. The locals seemed to notice it because a minute later, we were all blemished again with rainbow colors. I loved the fact that the revelers were polite about it. They always asked my permission before flinging powders in my direction. I was like, “Bring it on, I’m game for this.”
Around early noon, the euphoric vibe turned more chaotic as the crowd started to thicken. Chaotic in a way it should be—otherwise it wouldn't be the Holi I had always wanted to witness.
Good Karma Brought the Holi to Me
I wouldn’t have known that my excitement to book cheap plane tickets to Kolkata would overlap with the Holi Festival. I just picked two random dates twenty-six days apart in March to pencil in my first ever visit to India.
Four years later and after a couple more return journeys to India, the memory of that Holi Festival remained as crystal clear in my head. I can still hear the laughter of the jubilant merrymakers as we all chucked colored powder in the air, catching it by dancing under it facing the sky with outstretched arms.
Living up to the original emphasis of the Holi rituals to shy away the demoness Holika, I felt like I had shed my own inner demons as well. My initial trip to India not only opened my eyes to a wider world, but I also discovered my good karma—the main mechanism that brought me there. A favorable fate that shall come aplenty, if only we can continue doing things at the pure desire of our heart and soul.
