Lathmar Holi at Nandgaon

Perched on a low hill about 50 km north-west of Mathura, Nandgaon is revered as the childhood home of Krishna, where the cowherd chief Nanda and mother Yashoda are said to have raised him.

• For most of the year it is a quiet pilgrim town crowned by the Nand Bhavan temple; for two days each Phalgun it becomes the second stage of Braj's most theatrical festival.
• Lathmar Holi is a paired, two-village drama, and Nandgaon hosts the return leg.
• On the first day the men of Nandgaon carry Krishna's mischief across the fields to Barsana, Radha's village, and are chased off with sticks; the very next day the tables turn here, and it is Nandgaon's women who take up the long bamboo lathis while men arriving from Barsana shield themselves with leather bucklers.
• The reenactment is rooted in Braj legend rather than record: tradition holds that Krishna and his friends teased Radha and the gopis, who answered with laughter and sticks, and the villages have swapped that mock-battle ever since.
• The action unfolds in the lanes below the temple and in open compounds, drenched in clouds of dry gulal and gerua, thick with the drumming of dhol, the exchange of Rasiya folk-verses and good-natured taunts.
• Men crouch and circle rather than strike back, absorbing the blows as devotion and sport combined.
• Overlooking it all is Nandarayaji ka Mandir, the Nand Bhavan, standing on the town's crest.
• The present shrine was raised in the mid-eighteenth century and enshrines Krishna and Balarama beside their parents Nanda and Yashoda.
• Pilgrims climb its steps for darshan before and after the play, and the surrounding sacred ponds, Pan Sarovar and Yashoda Kund, add older, calmer layers of the Krishna story.
• For the vegetarian traveller, Nandgaon is reassuringly simple: all of Braj is pure-vegetarian by long custom, and the day's foods are festive sweets and prasad, from milk-thickened pedas to gujiya.
• One firm caution, though: Braj is one of India's heaviest bhang (cannabis) belts, and around Holi bhang-laced thandai and lassi are sold openly at roadside stalls and government theka shops, often looking and named exactly like the ordinary drink.
• Never accept an unlabelled thandai from a festival stall; carry your own food and water, and keep to trusted kitchens.
• Come for the spectacle, but come prepared.
• Old clothes you will discard, a scarf over the face against the gulal, sealed water, and patience with dense crowds all make the day far better.
• Watching from a doorway or rooftop, rather than the middle of the melee, is how most pilgrims enjoy the colour without the crush.