Category: Experiential Tourism

Holi -” The Festival Of Colors” is celebrated in different ways across different regions of India. As you will be going through the list of best places to celebrate Holi in India, you will be quite surprised by how people celebrate it. Mostly you will be thinking people celebrate Holi only with colors, but that is, not the case as there are places which use flowers, sweets(laddoos), and evens laths or sticks for that matter.

Holi celebrations are associated with many mythological stories too. Some celebrate it as Lord Krishna and Radha celebrate it, some celebrate it to kill Holika and save Prahalad, some celebrate it to welcome the spring season, and some others celebrate it for the sheer pleasure of getting drenched in Colors.

Here is the list of best places to celebrate Holi and get your whole body painted with colors in India  

Best Places to celebrate holi in India

Mathura & Vrindavan Holi Celebrations

If you love old school stuff and want to go crazy with colors in a traditional way, then this place gotta be on your list. Just because we tell you it is a traditional way of celebration, doesn’t mean it is short of fun. If by any chance you are attending the Holi Celebrations in Mathura or Vrindavan, you are guaranteed to experience one hell of a color fun ride.

And, this place Mathura & Vrindavan, as few people say can also be called the birthplace of the Holi festival due to its close ties with Lord Krishna. Mathura is a place where Lord Krishna was born and Vrindavan, which is just a few Km away from Mathura is a place where he was brought up. Apart from this, locals also believe that playing with colors was originated during the Radha & Krishna Era.

Further, we can spot a lot of locals playing the ancient Matki Phod game during Holi. In this game, an earthen pot filled with lots of butter is hung high on top using ropes. Some guys form a pyramid-like structure to break open the pot filled with butter, that is placed at a great height, while the ladies throw colors and splash water at guys to distract them.

Mathura

Here you can see locals getting into a festive mood 40 days prior (i.e starting from Vasant Panchami day which marks the end of winter) to the actual Holi festival date. 

Dwarkadheesh temple of Mathura is renowned to provide the best holi celebration experience in the town. The whole town comes together for processions filled with vibrant color and hard beat music that starts from Vishram ghat and ends at the holi gate. And if you are an early person, never miss a chance to see how traditional drink bhang is being prepared near Vishram ghat by priests. Now that, you have seen how the Bhang is prepared, what next? drink as much as Bhang as possible and get high (get drunk and get high).

Note: Bhaang is a special drink prepared during holi using marijuana, milk, and various other herbs.

Vrindavan (Phoolon wali Holi)

This place is famous for “Phoolon wali Holi” i.e. people throwing flowers on each

Not to mention, here it is celebrated as a week-long festival. Banke Bihari temple hosts the best holi celebration in Vrindavan and processions here look grandeur, colorful and musical. The main holiday starts with priests throwing flowers on devotees and later continued by people throwing tons & tons of flowers at one another. And, it is one of the great sights to watch people playing with flowers. After this, the next 3 days are dealt with a humongous amount of colors. Banke Bihari Temple opens the door for all the devotees and tourists to play holi in their backyard.

Unquestionably, both the places are famous throughout the country and you can spot millions of tourists and pilgrims visiting this place during holi. You can welcome the spring season by getting involved in numerous pujas, rituals, and traditional activities here.

Barsana Holi Celebrations

Undoubtedly, a unique way of celebration can be noted here, as you have never seen before. Playing holi at Barsana dates back to the days of the Radha Krishna era. And to our surprise, the holi is being played the same way as to how it all started back then.

Laddoo holi

Laddoo holi is a distinctive one where the priests, as well as devotees, throw sweets on each other, and along with that spiritual song on Radha & Krishna are sung to mark the arrival of Lord Krishna from Nandgaon to Barsana village. And, Laddoo holi is celebrated one day before the Lathmar holi in the famous Shriji temple dedicated to princess Radha in Barsana.

Note: Laddoos are a popular sweet prepared throughout India

Lathmar holi

At Barsana it can never get crazier than this, you can spot locals putting into use lathi’s (sticks) and shields, just for the sheer pleasure of it. Women of Barsana and Nandgaon dressed up in their brand new traditional clothes beat up men of both the villages. However, males come prepared with shields to dodge against sticks thrown at them. After that, on the main holi date, all the locals unite together in Nandgoan village to celebrate the festival of colors with lots of color and Bhaang in their hands.  

Note: Shriji temple or Ladli Ji temple dedicated to Princess Radha is the best place to experience holi in Barsana

Origination of  Holi festival 

A small story from the chapters of Radha Krishna Leela will tell you how the festival of colors originated in these regions.

There are two tiny villages near Mathura called Nandgaon & Barsana. Barsana was the birthplace of Radha. It is believed that Lord Krishna used to travel with his gang of friends from Nandgao to Barsasa to visit his beloved Radha. As Krishna was little mischievous in his teenage, he used to playfully tease Radha & her friends, hence Gopis (Radha friends) used lathi(stick) in turn to chase them away. On the other hand, Krishna used to throw color on Radha before running away.

Pushkar Holi Celebrations

Not mentioning Pushkar on this elite list would be certainly unfair. Like many other places, the festive mood starts at least a week prior to the actual date.

The night before the main holi festival, all local people along with the temple priests and village head come together to light up a bonfire that is structured like Holika or asura. People burn the Holika statue to save Prahlada who was a devotee of Lord Vishnu. This burning of Holika symbolizes the victory of good over evil

The next morning, people start early by marching their way into the streets to get drenched in colors and gulp as many glasses of bhaang as possible. You can spot the entire city on the streets partying like crazy animals with processions everywhere; loud EDMs that would blow off your ears; people dancing to the crazy tunes of DJs; drummers & musicians rising the beats, and every individual becomes performers under the sky doing some random stuff. 

Last but not least, guys who enter the processions fully dressed will have their clothes fully ripped apart and thrown on top of electric wires. Hence, this holi is called “Kapde Faad holi”.

Who is Holika?

The Holika here refers to the demon, the sister of  Hiranyakashipu, who burnt herself to death in the process of throwing her nephew Prahlada, a devotee of Vishnu into the blazing fire.

Shantiniketan Holi Celebrations

Shantiniketan, a quaint little town near Bolpur of West Bengal celebrates Holi to welcome the spring season. The festival of spring is called Vasant Utsav in Shantiniketan. 

Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore who loved various cultures across India, had introduced the festival of colors in Vishwa Bharati University as an annual event. In addition, Rabindranath Tagore and local people added a cultural touch to the whole celebrations by Including activities like singing, dancing, performing folk arts, etc and elevated the whole thing to the next level.

Vasant Utsav is a three days folk festival, where all the students dress up in colors that symbolize spring season. You can experience students joining hands along with the actual artists and performing for various arts like Natua dance,  Chhau dance, Darbari Jhumur, and sing regional songs as well as songs written by Tagore that are popular among locals. The best part of the festival is that it is completely organized by the villagers as a way of helping sustain regional art forms and themselves. And, at the end of cultural activities students are seen throwing colors at each other and even locals start their celebrations by getting drenched in colors.

All these activities attract thousands of tourists all over the world and not just that, even these tourists are given a chance to participate in some activities and get hooked to color celebrations along with locals.

What started as a cultural event in Shantiniketan has now become an integral part of the whole of the West Bengal culture.

Jaipur & Udaipur Holi Celebrations

Do you want to see as in how the royals go about their Holi celebrations? then you gotta head to Jaipur or Udaipur to experience the grandeur of all celebrations across India. 

If you happened to be at these places before 2012 during the Holi festival then you would have spotted parades of elephants, camels, and horses decorated with lots of jewels and fabrics being taken around the city. However, all of these things are banned now because the use of animals is against animal laws. But nothing to worry as celebrations have become bigger and better suited to the present-day generation. 

Usually, the festival of color is a two-day event in these royal places. On the first day evening, a big Holika pyre is set into the fire by the royals belonging to the Mewar dynasty followed by large scale feasts; Bhaang parties, folks songs, cultural activities, and firework displays all over the city. 

The next day, all locals and tourists gather together to turn all the people and the city to different shades of colors. Apart from the colors, loud music, EDMs, songs, DJ beats, dance, and Bhaang are always part of these colorful stories in Udaipur and Jaipur. People even participate in palace processions that have royal bands and bejeweled horses that march from the royal residence of the Mewar dynasty to Manek chowk.

Hampi Holi Celebrations

Last on the list is the ancient town and a UNESCO World Heritage Centre Hampi. 

Generally speaking, Holi celebrations are not part of South India, but still, celebrations here are massive and grand as it pulls in a huge western crowd. Hampi which usually seems like a black&white movie, but this time it turns around to reveal its rather unusual colorful avatar during Holi celebrations. Be it partying, drumming, dancing, singing, or playing with colors everything here reaches another unimaginable level. Once all this is done and dusted, all people go near the sacred Tungabhadra river to wash off the colors. To sum it up, Holi in Hampi is majorly celebrated to benefit the western crowd.

Note: If you go to Hampi to be a part of Holi celebrations, please don’t go and wash off the color in the river because it is not nature friendly and moreover it will be polluting the water resources, which millions of people use to drink.

Conclusion

Now that you have seen our list of best places to celebrate Holi, make sure the festival of colors doesn’t go to waste. If you think we have missed out on certain places, please do share it in the comment section below, we are happy to hear from you.

Also read: Best Places To Trek In Karnataka