By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
Running through the streets of Thamel, it is as though everything good in this world is crying - tears of colour and joy. The ground, once that familiar Kathmandu brown, is lit up with more colours than a rainbow would know what to do with. We move through swathes of laughing children, but these were no ordinary children. They're Gorkha. Warriors of Nepal. They've flanked us, encircled us, and now it's time for war by waterbomb. I'd say it was life or death, but when playing Holi, only dust is thrown, not ashes. Having lost our battle convincingly, we press on, ever alert of another ambush. Around the corner lies a group of Nepali youth. This time, our age. The procession begins. We lock eyes and form our respective lines. As we walk toward each other, smiles curve onto our coloured caricatures; these lines are not for battle, and there will be no war this time. As we close in, cries from both lines begin: "happy holi!". Curiously, the day's rollicking pace now begins to slow. With hands coated in red powder, I meet the first well-wisher and notice his hands are blue. His gaze meets mine. Now, time stops, and the outside world falls away. He brings his hands up to my face and coats me in his blue - he reaps a face painted red in return. I've taken part in this ritual many times today, but now, with this local Nepali, its different. The excited, jubilant greeting is replaced by a calm, soft one. His hands don't slap his colour onto me, they connect lightly as if to caress a wounded animal. Perhaps he sees a deep pain in my immediately uncontrollable, teary eyes as he leaps into my heart. If it were a woman, I might have let romance cloud the purity of the moment. Between two men, there was merely an incredible, universal love. For an eternal second, we knew we were brothers, both made of stars, both living and breathing from the same source. Two separate waves of the one, colourful ocean, coming together. We shook hands, hugged, and said a few words the opposite could not understand. There was no need. At Holi, the festival of love, words of the human mind paled in comparison to the undefinable language of the soul.