Goa's Carnival Parade

When researching our trip to India I realised that our visit was happening during their Carnival Celebrations. I was hoping it would be as colourful as the Carabana parade here in Toronto considering how vibrant India can be on a daily basis. What I didn't factor in was the budget the Carabana parade has. The Mapusa parade was a fun celebration with floats and music and plenty of parade revellers. I think it was more like our Toronto Beaches Easter parade. The presenters were all local people having a great time. I think the activity we did before and after the parade gave me a better feeling for regular Indian life. We visited the local market and risked our lives trying to get home in the traffic at the end.

Parade route Mayhem:

This float was one of the largest and most colourful in the parade. The road was not very wide and there were hundreds of people pouring onto the parade route. If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see the police trying to get the people to back up. It was unbelievable how brave or naive the people were that were standing at the front of the line. Luckily no one got hurt that I know of.

Anti-smoking campaign float

This was quite the float. At first I wondered if it was celebration of the dead like they do in Mexico but no, it was a moving add against smoking. There are no laws against smoking in India, maybe this is a start. Some of these people should have been more worried about dying from being run over or trampled  before smoking would kill them. I also captured the village scape that lined the parade route. It was a strong contrast to the lively vibrant people who live there.

Colourful Costumes

These costumes reminded me the most of our Carabana parade colour.

Watching the parade:

I turned around and saw this guy just hanging out, watching the parade with a huge bag of rice on his head. It is just a common occurrence to be balancing stuff on your head. I guess their necks are stronger that their arms or they might need their arms for something else?