Holi Fesival of Colors: Hare Krishna

Saturday night I went with a group to the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple.
We attended the Holi Festival.
This is part of a quote from a Fox News 13 story, "It's one of the most unusual events in Utah - the Holi Festival in Spanish Fork. It has an intensely Hindu message, but has largely Mormon attendance. The festival was held at the Krishna Temple Saturday."

The Holi Festival. It was Crazy. The festival celebrates the beginning of spring. For the event everyone goes to the temple in Spanish Fork, just south of here. We all bought colors (bags of pink, purple and silver chalk) and basically you just throw them at one another. It is surprisingly SO fun. The throwing of the colors symbolizes that we are all the same, all children of God. After you are all covered in chalk, there is no difference from one person to another. To start the celebration there is a bonfire and an evil demoness is burned to signify the triumph of good over evil.


This little man was the first to throw colors at us... we didn't even have a chance to buy ours yet! He's pretty cute.












This is a Hindu event, right? Well you never would have known because the temple was over-crowded with massive amounts of BYU students. I think I saw maybe 10 people that were actually Hindu, the rest were Cougars!! We got to the event a little late because traffic getting to the temple started before we even exited the freeway. We parked at least 2 and 1/2 miles away. In one of the pictures you can see us walking and the there is a huge pink cloud above the temple! CraZy! On other college campuses you'd have to be drunk to act the way we did!

I am secretly happy we weren't there for the start. I would have died from the chalk inhalation. AND my body would never have rid itself of it... I found chalk in my ears, my fingernails, my nose and MANY other places. I am still finding chalk everywhere!

We sang "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Krishna!" over and over for at least 2 hours, threw lots of chalk, danced and had a good time.

That was by far the strangest event I have ever been too. Yet, really fun. It is huge on campus. People really talk it up and BYU kids are their greatest participants. My neighbors Amanda and Jackie even got on stage and played cymbals with the band. Haha I felt like I was at woodstock in the '60's or something. weird. but cool.

We went with Aaron Anderson, Aaron Haslam, Kyle Wright, Kiara Call, Jackie Daniels-Brown, Amanda Johnson, Brodie Howard, and ME! oh and we saw Chris Matheson from my ward there too!