Holi festival is celebrated on the full moon day in the month of Falgun every year in mountain and hilly districts. However, Tarai districts observe the holi festive the next day of poornima or full moon.

Most Tarai natives don’t want to stay here as they want to celebrate with their own people back home. Some instruments are also not available here, but we tried our best to organize this party for those who can’t go home. They feel like they’re in the Terai.

People in terai are celebrating the Holi today. Holi festival was celebrated in the mountain and hilly districts of the country in an enthusiastic manner on Monday. People took part in the celebrations by smearing one another with different colourful powders and exchanging mutual harmony

The holi festival which carries a message of mutual harmony and goodwill with the arrival of spring season has been celebrated since ancient times with colourful powders and coloured water. Lately, coloured-water-filled balloons are being used to hurl at one another.

Holi, the festival of colours, is now being celebrated in a more decent way in recent period due to police intervention.Traditionally, Tarai regions celebrate the festival a day later. Although Holi is celebrated both in hill and terai on same legend, the different is day and style. .

As in hill, the story dates back to ancient times when the powerful King Hiranyakasyap, who rejected god, attempted to kill his son Bhaktaprahlad by casting him into the fire. Sharing the fire was the King’s sister, Holika, who was apparently granted immunity to the flames by the gods. In this tale, the public was divided in their support for the god-fearing Bhaktaprahlad and the King’s sister. Ultimately, Holika perished in the flames and the King’s son survived, which is key to the Tarai celebrations taking place a day after.

“People of the Tarai are supporters of Bhaktaprahlad, so we celebrate the death of Holika the day before, and the day after is to commemorate the victory of Bhaktaprahlad,” explained Krishna.

The liberal use of colored powder is linked to the legend of Ramayana, when Ram returned victorious to his city of Ayodhya and was showered with rang (colors).

Songs were belted out with vigor in Maithili, and new arrivals to the party were literally assaulted by buckets of colored water and powder in red, yellow, green, and purple hues. However, festivities were muted compared to the traditions of the Tarai.

In terai, the day before Holi, people collect wood and make bonfires, celebrating the death of Holika. In Kathmandu, people bonfires on the evening of holi as a symbol of ending the festival. However, Terai starts after bonfire.

On Holi itself, children touch their foreheads to their parents’ feet in reverence. Later, clay pots filled with colored water are strung up high in between street poles and tipped over as people sing and dance in circles below.

People mostly sing songs of the victory of Bhaktaprahlad, as well as other gods. To the Tarai people, the style of celebrating Holi in Kathmandu is unusual.

People in terai hold the view that the holi in Kathmandu is very modern, much like the festivals in Europe. The original culture of Holi is still in the Tarai, probably nowhere else in Nepal.