Mathura Ke Rang, Bhang Ke Sang

With the arrival of spring, we witness the festive season of Holi, an ancient Hindu festival that is celebrated in all corners of India.

Holi is a colorful festival where people eagerly wait to smear each other with colors and enjoy a plate of delicious gujiyas (a traditional sweet). The festival of colors has attracted millions of tourists from all over the world to be a part of this mesmerizing festival in India. Mathura has a different vibe of celebrating this festival and you can only feel it when you are there.

The Holi in Mathura Plan:

One fine day my best friend from college gives me a call and said we need to be in Mathura for the festive season of Holi and must book the travel tickets now! The first thing that came to my mind was “Why do we need to be at a religious place to celebrate?”

When you get a call like this you barely have an opinion and the next thing, we were on our way to Mathura from Mumbai on a train journey, it took us around 26hrs to reach our destination. Siddhant did manage to get some bhang goli (Sshh!!! scored from a secret pan shop ) for the journey, which we ate with a loaf of bread and by the time I was coming to my senses we already reached our destination.

As we waited for others to arrive, we decided to taste a very famous “Mathura ka Peda”, “Maner ke Laddu” and “Agra ka Petha”. As the sweets were melting in our mouth, we could feel the city was inviting us for a lifetime experience.

The Legalized Bhang Store:

“We need to have bhang on Holi” but from where you will buy. bhang is again a question as this is not sold openly in other places of India. Here in Mathura, we hopped in a rickshaw to go to the Govt Legalised Bhang store. 

With the level of excitement, we had 3 golis each, mixed in a sugarcane juice.

(The juice hawker did warn us though, but it was my first time and looking at the govt store selling bhang, I said to myself. Today is the day, I am going to do this.

By the time we were in our suite, the sensation of dry lips and craving for food kicked in and little did we realized we were looking to each other face and laughing our ass out. The laughter stops only when you put food in your mouth, the bhang effect did tickle our funny bones and felt if we can add a shaft to our stomach, we should be able to run an engine motor and generate electricity.

On the day of Holi, We planned to visit the hub of all the madness

Banke Bihari Temple:

One of the famous temples in Mathura, a must-visit spot during Holi, which I totally missed because of the precious sleep, however Rajan, Karan & Siddhant manage to stay awake the whole night and went to visit the temple around 7 in the morning.

based on their experience, it was crowded with millions of people and took around 20 mins to get into the main spot and didn’t have to put much of an effort as the crowd was automatically pushing each other inside.

The temple is in a courtyard covered with huge walls. The morning Sunkissed was surreal, Banke Bihari murti was shining bright, around 60-70 people could get in the courtyard that too for only 5 mins. you can spot the pandit splattering colour, a man playing the huge drum, people singing bhajans.

The nirvana feeling kicked in those 5 mins, an ultimate insight into the Hindu belief of being happy to a prosperous life.

Photography was prohibited inside the temple, but that moment is only to be captured by our eyes and memories.

The day of Holi:

“Delhi he dilwalon ki, Mumbai paise walo ki aur Mathura he masstano ki” That’s the slogan which perfectly fits Mathura.

Delhi is for the big-hearted, Mumbai is for the richness and Mathura is for the jolly people

Everyone was in the jolly mood on the day of Holi or maybe the people are in that mood throughout the year.

Millions of tourists from all over the world were celebrating the festival. The streets were full of colours, dhol taasha, dance moves, roadside thandai, sweets and lots of happy people.

Every journey changes you a little, makes you a different version of yourself and this is one of my favorite and worth remembering, though we don’t remember most of the things we did.

“Thanks to Color of Bhang”

However, I may have not been able to describe the experience in our #BackyardStories column, but you can feel the experience in this Video created by Raj Rajan.

We would love to hear your experience with similar travel topics and can help you to articulate with our column, videos, photography, etc. 

Inked by Allen Mutum

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