***spoilers are way, way down***

Pink or not, Kelly races on.

And India comes through again! This season of my beloved “Amazing Race” has sometimes been a snooze, but let them get to India and woo-ha! How much did I love the paint battle at the Holi festival? So much I watched it twice to laugh at bitchy divorcees Kelly and Christy again. First, we saw them being snotty about everything from how icky it would be to have to kiss Andrew or Dan to how icky India smelled and how icky-stupid their cab driver was. Then, the gods of “The Amazing Race” reached down and plopped them in the middle of the Holi festival, which is a real event that celebrates spring. The Roadblock called for one member of each team to race through hordes of people throwing paint powder and squirting water (voila, paint!) to climb a ladder and sort through envelopes looking for one that said “The Amazing Race.” Okey doke. Everybody managed, although Terrence (of Terrence and Sarah) was certainly a baby about getting paint up his nose. He acted as if he expected Sarah to dial 911. But everybody managed; zipped in, climbed, found the envelope and zipped out, painty but finished. Kelly, however, who started second, was apparently blinded by the paint and ran amusingly around in circles. When she finally climbed the ladder, she grabbed an envelope and ran back — but she grabbed one that said “Try Again.” Over and over, she ran and got painted and grabbed a “Try Again” envelope, falling down (as they said once on “Big Brother,” karma is a bitch) while complaining it was impossible that everybody else was finishing. And when they finally figured it out and finished, they’d fired their cabbie and had to try to find another cab that would pick them up covered with paint. When one finally did, they stuck their painty faces out the window and tried to scare passers-by, because girls just want to have fun.

Ah, and then there were Ken and Tina. After almost being eliminated last week, K&T were running last, and while Ken did the Roadblock, Tina shrieked instructions to him, as she always does — until festival-goers painted her bright green. Somehow, this seemed to calm her down. When K&T hit their Speed Bump (a task only they, the last-finishers, had to perform), she was Miss Charm while handing out holy water at a temple, telling everybody, “God bless you,” while Ken cracked bad jokes and generally made an unholy fool of himself.

After a barefoot romp through a Charity Bird Hospital, where pigeons with broken wings rehab, the teams were on to the final Detour, a choice between carrying and crushing red peppers (Terrence and Sarah picked that, apparently hoping tears would clear Terrence’s nose) or counting tags on power lines on a busy street. Still feeling holy, Tina eventually helped  Andrew and Dan figure out that they were counting the wrong things, as were Kelly and Christy. The best part of this was that after a final count, everybody got to plug in a Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, who waved her many arms and lit up.

Eventually, although Ken had to direct traffic, he and green-haired Tina finished in mid-pack. Andrew and Dan beat Kelly and Christy to the mat, and they were on their way home, probably still spitting up paint.