Watch India’s Sacred City Varanasi Celebrate Colour Festival Holi with Cremains, Snakes and Smoke

© AP Photo / Altaf QadriA view of the River Ganges and Ghats, or bathing steps that line along a river, in Varanasi, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, India, Friday, Oct. 9, 2015
A view of the River Ganges and Ghats, or bathing steps that line along a river, in Varanasi, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, India, Friday, Oct. 9, 2015 - Sputnik International, 1920, 14.03.2022
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Holi - the festival of colours - is underway in India. Though celebrated differently depending on where you are in India's vast country, Holi commemorates the victory of good over evil and marks the end of winter and the arrival of spring.
0People in Varanasi - India’s ancient city which has also been dubbed the Jerusalem of Hinduism - started celebrating the week-long color festival on Monday with Bhasma Holi.
Bhasma (cremated remains or "cremains") Holi is a unique tradition in Varanasi whereby youths and elders congregate at the centuries-old crematorium located on the bank of the holy Ganges river on Ekadashi (the 11th day of the Hindu month Falguna) every year.
According to popular mythology, Lord Shiva played Holi with ghosts, spirits, and invisible forces at that very crematorium, a day after his marriage to the Goddess Parvati.
Monday witnessed the onset of Bhasma Holi with youngsters cheering and joining the wise counsellors in the fanfare at Manikarnika Ghat (cremation ground where thousands of corpses are burnt each day according to Hindu ritual) of Varanasi.
The celebrations started with the sages lifting their voices to lord Shiva and smearing the co-revellers with ashes collected from the pyres and throwing them into the air.
Some hermits were also seen dancing in a trance with snakes wrapped around their neck. Smoking strange herbal substances is also an integral part of the celebrations.
After Bhasm Holi, people of Varanasi - which is the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi - celebrate Holi by throwing about Rang (differently coloured bright powders).
The festival will end on 18 March with people from all round the country celebrating in their own ways - although the delights of playing with colorful balloons, getting drenched in coloured water, taking a dip in muddy puddles and throwing coloured powder in the air are all pretty universal throughout the country.
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