Our day started with a drive to spanish fork. Normally, Spanish has some pretty interesting people. But there is nothing like seeing an army of pink bodies walk miles down the road. You guessed it, we were on our way to the festival of colors. Our first thought, why is nobody smiling? What in the world are we getting ourselves into? We were about to find out. The five dollars I paid to park across from the temple? Best five dollars I have ever spent. The walk up the hill consisted of getting hit by various pedestrians who thought it was cool to hit people with chalk on their way up to the temple. Sure great, that's what I'm here for. But please.. keep it out of my mouth. Ladies with the babies covered in chalk? That should be illegal. The rest of the day consisted of this: Everybody.. put your hands in the air, do you feel that? It's the heartbeat of the world, do you feel the energy? Now.. everybody hug 20 people! Hmm.. the entertainment of the festival of colors. Let's just say, it's different. Girls with buzzed heads and poncho's, boys with hair down to their shoes, girls with dreads, and boys wearing skirts. This is just the beginning. Somehow we got caught in the middle of the crowd. Rules of advice for the day: if you're a crowd surfer, please don't come by us.. because we all duck and cover, and end up watching said crowd surfer fall on the ground in front of us. sorry. I want to make a shout out to tough guy! : If you get angry when people bump into you, and you feel the sudden urge to push them to the ground, maybe the middle of a mosh pit and a crowd of 5,000 teenagers jumping up and down isn't exactly the right place for you. Step one in recovery: recognizing your problem. I've never seen so many people covered in a sea of color simultaneously jumping up and down. By the end of the day most of us were wishing we could go back to the free hugs. We burned witches, threw chalk, and listened to music that probably would have sounded better if we had marijuana running through our systems. we got pushed and shoved, dirty, and covered in mud. We hugged strangers, and felt the heartbeat of the earth. We watched people fight, and were the reason many crowd surfers probably had a headache. We asked ourselves, why are we here? and why haven't we been here before? and by the time we bid farewell to hare Krishna, we realized why those walkers didn't have smiles on their faces. They had just experienced he most emotionally draining, craziest, funnest, most colorful thing ever. That, and they probably had too much chalk in their lungs to function. Festival of colors.. we'll see you next year.
