Holi at Stanford University - enjoy the festival of colors!

Holi at Stanford University is a HUGE event and is celebrated every year by students as well as the large Indian population in the bay area. I attended the event there while I was a student there and completely loved the vibe and the festivities! Played with organic colors, the festival is a great place to meet friends and make new ones, and also a great way to showcase the culture of India to our American brethren :)

Holi at Stanford!

Some more mad dancing crowd!

For a moment I just stood silent and looked around, and it felt so good. There were colors all around, people (mostly women) running and screaming, monster lookalikes eating, laughing and back-slapping; not to mention the blaring loudspeakers playing a mix of Hindi and English songs. I was happy to see people enjoying themselves, more so because almost a half of them were non-Indians.

Stanford celebrates Holi about a month after the actual event in India, and its called Asha Holi. Its a two day an annual event and is open to everyone, though students from Stanford do get a discount. The colors are organic (or so they say) and you don't pay for them separately; they are pretty good as they came off pretty easily with just a couple of showers later. 

The mad, mad, mad crowd...Sonia and me on the right!

Holi hai!

People were always willing to pose, when they took a break from putting colors on you :)

I had Abhinav and Sonia with me (most of my other bay area friends attended the previous day), but keeping with the spirit of Holi (no one ever feels alone on Holi in India, as everyone plays withe everyone else) we were covered in colors the moment we entered the ground. We graciously returned the favor once we were also armed with our supplies of red, blues, pinks and greens. Sadly had no water guns, and could never take revenge on the tiny kids who sprayed water on everyone dry around.

Sonia and Abhinav :)

This dude is getting some attention!

He fell about four times befor he climbed his friend :)

Something about Holi and climbing friends :)

Did I make any friends? Haha...I did flirt with a few pretty women (that's quite an assumption as they all looked very blue or red) while dancing to some really catchy Indian numbers. M need not worry as no phone numbers were exchanged :) But of course I ended up being much better friends with Abhi and Sonia (though I almost spoiled the car seat when they dropped me back home)...

I didn't tale the risk of carrying my camera (who would?, but some actually did) and all of these are from Abhi's iphone (which I risked often during the day) :)

So anything missing? Oh yes...Alcohol!

Getting ready to attack!

Just a random crowd pic...