Dusshera

The last 10 days it has been a holiday here. It's called Navratri. Many different things and celebrations happen during this time. Lots of sweets, loud music and parties going on everywhere!
Today was Dusshera. It occurs on the tenth day following the Navratri. It is a festival to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, and marks the defeat and death of the demon king Ravana in the epic Ramayana. So, to celebrate this, they have a big festival and burn huge effigies of Ravana. It's pretty crazy!

We stopped by the park earlier today to get a picture of Ravana (the demon king) in the daylight. This one actually didn't look so scary:
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he has 10 heads... I'm going to have to read about that part of the story again - I can't exactly remember why he has 10 heads... Last year's Ravarna was a whole lot scarier looking than this year's (see below)...

They were setting up all day to sell weapons and masks for the kids to celebrate the holiday...

We got there and there were THOUSANDS of people there... this is amazing because there were many statues that were going to burn all over the city... there were at least 2 in our neighborhood alone! Anyway - we finally found a good viewing point, and found a seat on the fence (yeah, just as comfortable as it sounds)... Finally, at 9:40 pm... after telling the story of Ravarna and a crazy and dangerous fireworks display... they finly set fire to Ravarna!It was pretty crazy to watch! It was crazy how close people were getting to it too!!
Once it burned/crashed to the ground, everyone stormed it!!! (I definitely wasn't expecting people to run towards the fire... especially since there were fireworks in it still that were still going off!!!) Everyone was trying to get a piece of it too! Crazy! Only in South Asia...