Diwali, an explosive festival

This post is also available in: French

Diwali is THE biggest Indian festival even if its intensity varies from a state to an other. It’s reminding us a bit of Christmas as everything is lighted up, Indians are exchanging gifts, having family diners, eating sweets and supposed to wear brand-new outfits. But, the funniest and craziest part of it is the big and loud place taken by crackers and fireworks in the celebrations. It’s starting some days before the D-day and continuing until stocks are empty. As many things in India, people are taking care of this by themselves. So don’t expect big fireworks shows well organized by the city, as we can experience it in France for some festivals. Instead you have millions of fireworks and crackers being lighted by everyone, everywhere and at any time!

If you can get through the “war-time” feeling that it can trigger, it’s pretty funny, dazzling and very exciting when you’re part of the action!
This time, we had planned to come-back from a week-end in Sri-Lanka, the same evening, with the secret hope that the view from the plane would match the craziness of the event. We let you judge with this small video taken from the window in our plane just before landing in Bangalore (sorry for the low quality):

It was cracking in every corner like flashs in a stadium! To continue enjoying an aerial view of the event, we went to one the restaurant at the 13th floor of the Barton Center. Unfortunately, we were a bit far from the residential areas but the view was still pretty amazing.

The day after, we organized our own Diwali from a friends’ terrace and we enjoyed a lot the feeling of becoming again kids firing crackers, fireworks every two minutes, running everywhere being both scared and fascinated.

So we’re now reaching the end of the “festival season” here (even if we learned yesterday that there’s an other festival soon nicknamed “Diwali’s brother”), so we can now start our own ones and think of Christmas!