Holi Festival India & 
Elephant Festival Photo Gallery

"Explore Indian Culture through our photos!"

On this Holi Festival India and Elephant Festival Page, you'll find my favorite pictures from the festivals.

The Holi festival in India is one of the coolest, but also craziest festivals in India, while the Elephant festival is more glamour with dressed-up elephants, parades and shows. 

Holi is a religious spring festival, celebrated in all parts of the country, but it's crazier in the north.

The point of bearing colors and throwing colored powders at each other, is to symbolize equality where Hindus are brought closer together. Factors like class, caste and status, gender, age don't matter during the Holi.

The Elephant Festival starts right before Holi. So if you're in Jaipur, you can catch the Elephant and the Holi Festival in one place! :-)

Enjoy the pictures!

First, the Elephant Festival in Jaipur!

One of the gorgeous elephants at the Elephant Festival in Jaipur. Some of the elephants are styled for the festival, and the mahouts are wearing traditional clothing.

Music is of course a crucial part of the Elephant Festival, with all kinds of instruments especially drums. The music is up-beat and you want to dance along!

Also horses at the Elephant Festival are styled, like this one.

These women are Kalbelia dancers - a traditional Rajasthani folk dance. They wear long black skirts, and dance to 'been', which is a wooden instrument of snake charmers.

Can you see what is what?

This elephant is just gorgeous. At first sight, you may not think it's an elephant due to the lion painting on its face.

The lion symbolizes the National Emblem of India.

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What so great about this festival is the colorful clothes and traditional wearing.

These dancers were just crazy (ugly)!

Me and Caroline at the Elephant Festival. At the end of the festival, tourists and backpackers could sit on elephants and throw colors at each other. Other people on the ground were throwing colors at us!

Watch my video clip from the Elephant Festival!

Holi Festival India photos:

Colored powders are sold many days before the event starts; at markets and in many street corners! One bag cost like Rs 10.

We started our Holi celebration at Krishna Palace Hotel in Bani Park, Jaipur. These backpackers joined the celebration in the garden :-)

Wear clothing that you would want to throw away later. I don't know if it's even possible to wash off the powder.

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Here I am with my former class mates from development studies. This is the result from hours of 'war' in Krishna Palace's garden.

While we were outside 'the gates' of Krishna Palace, a local guy smeared powder in Caroline's face and she got some in her eyes. It stings like hell, so watch out!

I look so beautiful! It doesn't look like me at all (being ironic). Well, that's the point of the whole festival. Once everyone is covered in colors, we are all 'alike' and equal ;-)

I don't recognize myself in this picture - pretty much the point of Holi festival India ;-) Don't wear lenses during Holi. You can see that my glasses are totally covered, but that's better than wearing lenses.

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