Festival of Colours

Now my romantic image of Holi was big piles of powder paint at the side of the road. People grabbing fistfuls of colour and throwing it in the air, everyone would then gambol about as the colour fluttered down. In slow motion. Maybe Purple Rain playing in the background.

The reality didn't quite hit this idyll: it was more strangers rubbing handfuls of paint and spit in your face; kids spraying bright blue insulating foam in your eyes; roaming gangs of increasingly feral men trying to grab whitegirl boobies with their painty, painty fingers. Happy Holi. I'd wondered why Holi was a dry day, given that without alcohol the whole city looked like Stabilo armageddon it was probably a good call.

We were in Mathura for Holi. Have you heard of Mathura? Of course not. It's one of those super-religious places - a bona fide pilgrimage site, with its ghats and its Krishna and its Arati - and it takes Holi pretty seriously. The night before Holi the town was full of peat pyres topped with plastic gods. Nothing says spiritual like toxic poo smoke and colouful groping.

I've revisited some of the big sites, this means we can reassess without anything being influenced by first impressions:

Qutb Minar: still ace. Who doesn't love squirrels on ruins?

Lotus Temple: amazing from far away. Inside it looks like a particularly soulless baptist church.

Taj Mahal: Like the Lotus Temple the vista is better than the reality, only dialled up on both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, it's real pretty from far away. But close up it's too big to see and inside it's dark and depressing. Added to that, wherever you are you're getting jostled by idiots and kettled by whistle-blowing Stazi, so the whole experience is just unpleasant. Given that it's at its best when it's far away, you may as well just look at a picture of it and save yourself the discomfort.

Agra Fort: A far more enjoyable experience than the Taj.

Akshardham: When I saw it the first time I thought it was the prettiest temple I'd ever seen. Now I'm far more jaded. Now I've seen a whole heap more temples all round India. Now I've read up about it and know that there's no real history to it. No other building that I've seen in India comes close.