Town of Holi colours
Vrindavan
For Holi the temple town of Krishna's childhood fills with clouds of pink, yellow and green powder.
Why Vrindavan is gulal pink
Vrindavan, in the Braj region of Uttar Pradesh, is where Hindus believe Krishna spent his childhood. Stories of Krishna playing with colour among the village girls make Braj the heartland of Holi, the spring festival of colours. Celebrations here run for days before the main date. At the Banke Bihari temple priests throw coloured powder, called gulal, and coloured water over the crowd. One day is played with flower petals instead of powder. Many widows live in the town, traditionally dressed in white and kept apart from festivals. Since 2013 some have joined Holi publicly, a change widely reported in India. A visitor in March should expect to leave thoroughly pink.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Vrindavan
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Vrindavan" on Wikipedia. If you know Vrindavan and we have it wrong, tell us.
More colour cities
All colour cities
๐ฎ๐ณ The Blue CityJodhpurOld-city houses washed in blue crowd the foot of Mehrangarh Fort, on the edge of the Thar Desert.
๐ฎ๐ณ The Pink CityJaipurThe walled city wears a dusty terracotta pink, first painted on for a royal visit in 1876 and kept ever since.
๐ฎ๐ณ The White CityUdaipurWhite palaces and whitewashed houses stand around lakes in the Aravalli hills of southern Rajasthan.
๐ฎ๐ณ The Golden CityJaisalmerA fort and town built of yellow sandstone that glows like honey at sunset, deep in the Thar Desert.
๐ฎ๐ณ City of saffron and lightVaranasiSaffron robes, marigold garlands and oil lamps colour the river steps of one of the oldest living cities.
๐ฎ๐ณ Birthplace of Krishna, home of HoliMathuraKrishna's birthplace celebrates Holi for more than a week, with processions, music and coloured powder.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jodhpur In: Lavpatel2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Jaipur In: Chainwit., CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Udaipur In: Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Jaisalmer In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Varanasi In: Marcin Biaลek, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Mathura In: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, source