Clouds of color fluttered through the air amidst a torrent of excitement. The parade of people marched and danced down the street celebrating Holi, the festival of color that literally and figuratively gilds Rishikesh in a bath of colorful chaos.
In a way Holi embodies India, a country that overwhelms the senses with colors, smells, personalities and cultural artifacts like nodding one’s head to say no or turning one’s side to side head to say yes (western countries do it the exact opposite).
Rishikesh embodies all of these quirks and then some.
The below photos are a final installment from Rishikesh. A street scene of an elderly couple sitting outside a temple: the women dressed in a colorful sari, looking bored while her husband talks on his cell phone. Another, a beautifully colored yet gritty wall in town and then an example of the town’s eccentric modernist architecture – a empty building that resembles a lighthouse on the holy Ganges River’s edge.
