What are the world’s craziest, most beautiful, scariest and weirdest festivals? Want an interesting bucket list? This list will give you an idea of what’s out there. Here’s where to start:
Hot Festivals and Carnivals
1. Rio Carnival
This is a pretty famous festival that takes place mostly in February. Check out the article specifically dedicated to this festival at ‘Crazy Rio Festival.’
The Rio Carnival is considered to be the biggest carnival in the world, with 2 million people crowding the street every day of the festival. The first Rio carnivals date back to 1823. The typical Rio carnival parade is filled with revelers, floats, and adornments from numerous local samba schools.
There are so many components to the festival that you’ll be guaranteed a crazy-good time. There’s a parade, fancy balls, and some serious street parties.
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2. La Tomatina Festival
Someone on YouTube was debating with me that La Tomatina is just a big waste of food. You could feed starving kids in Africa, this person suggested. Well, I didn’t know what to say. You could indeed feed starving kids all over the world, but then I thought about the 24 foot swimming pool in my backyard. Am I hoarding water for my own pleasure? Mea culpa.
What about Halloween? How many millions of edible pumpkins are desecrated for the sake of decoration?
Or Christmas Trees? Sure, they aren’t eaten, but instead of growing them, couldn’t we grow crops for the hungry on that land?
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This case is somewhat difficult to argue since no one is exactly sure how the festival started, but suffice to say that you’ll get good fun in exchange for your uneaten tomatoes. Participants throw tomatoes at each other and ride down those tomato-streaked slides, having the time of their lives. Although only a limited amount of people are allowed to participate and there are strict rules to make sure that everyone stays safe, you could one day experience this one of a kind festival if you plan ahead.
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3. South Korea’s Boryeong Mud Festival
The Boryeong Mud Festival is an annual festival that takes place during the summer in Boryeong, a town around 200 km south of Seoul, South Korea.
A South Korean cosmetics company manufactured a line of beauty products that featured mud from the Boryeong mud flats as a main ingredient.
Since the company couldn’t be bothered to spend money on commercials, the Boryeong Mud Festival was born so potential customers could feel the benefits of the special mud firsthand. In case you attend and get bored of the mudslides, mud prison, mud pools, and mud skiing, you can enjoy live music, acupuncture, and the festival’s culminating fireworks display.
4. Holi in India
Originally, it was a festival that commemorated good harvests and the fertile land. People of the Hindu faith believed Holi to be a time of enjoying spring’s abundant colors and saying farewell to winter.
There are other sources that claim the festival originated in legends of Hiranyakashipu. The traditional bonfire and play with color celebrate the triumphs of good over evil and light over dark.
It can also be regarded as a celebration of the colors of unity – an opportunity to forget all differences and indulge in unadulterated fun. It has traditionally been celebrated in high spirits without any distinction of cast, creed, color, race, status or gender. It is one occasion when sprinkling colored powder (‘gulal’) or colored water on each other breaks all barriers of discrimination so that everyone looks the same and universal unity is reaffirmed.
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5. Burning Man, United States
Burning Man is a yearly celebration in Nevada’s Black Rock desert, where up to 50,000 people gather to create art and express their individuality.
The festival takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy, which is set alight on Saturday evening. The event is described as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance. People who have gone to the Burning Man gatherings claim that you need to attend the festival to truly understand it.
6. Songkran Water Festival
Thailand celebrates its new year on some of the hottest days in its calendar. People thus enjoy throwing water on each other, using water guns, buckets, hoses – whatever they can get their hands on – in order to cool off and have some fun.
In a further attempt to cool down, some people use menthol mixed water help them cool down in the extreme summer heat.
7. Amsterdam’s Gay Pride Parade
This is probably one of the ten best things to do in Amsterdam.
The parade generally takes place between 5 and 7 August, and it can be a lot of fun! Make sure you go for a piece of pie at ‘De Taart van Mijn Tante’ on Ferdinand Bol Straat, and the Albert Cyup Market on the corner. Have fun!
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8. Oktoberfest of Germany
Germany’s traditional autumn festival is held in Munich every October, and it features beer-drinking and merrymaking – lots of merrymaking.
If you go to Oktoberfest with the right people, you will have the best time of your life and will always want to come back.
9. London’s Nottinghill Carnival
This is perhaps the 2nd largest festival after Rio Carnival in Brazil in this category. It is quite similar to that, but with an English flair. You have Samba, a beautiful parade, live music, and alcohol raining.
Crazy and Scary Festivals
1. Sanfermines Festival
This festival involves running ahead of bulls who can literally gore people with their massive horns. The point is to get the bulls from the fields outside of the city or village to the bullring where they would later be killed.
A first rocket is set off at 8 am to alert the runners that the corral gate is open. A second rocket signals that all six bulls have been released. The third and fourth rockets are signals that all of the herd has entered the bullring and its corral respectively, marking the end of the event.
Every year, between 200 and 300 people are injured during the run, although most injuries are contusions due to falls and are not serious.
2. Naked Bike Ride Festival
This is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and cycle together to “deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world.”
3. Halloween Fest
Halloween is one of the most recognizable holidays around the world. Derived from a hodgepodge of traditions from various cultures, this is a time to celebrate and remember the dead. In the United States, however, it is a time for costumes, parties, and tales of terror.
This tradition started in the 18th Century when people in Wales and other regions started dressing up as evil spirits and ghosts to make fun of the concept of bringing back the dead. This quickly spread and became a hallmark of the American calendar. Ostensibly to scare the dead, people also carry various lanterns such as the Jack-o’-lanterns.
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4. Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos
Dia de los Muertos means Day of Dead in Spanish. It is a primarily Mexican holiday celebrated throughout the country and around the world in various cultures, but the main celebrations take place in Central and South Mexico.
The festival focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember their beloved dead.
Customs connected with the festival include building private altars called ofrendas, honoring the deceased with edible sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed, and visiting their graves with these as gifts.
Noisy Festivals
1. Up Helly Aa Fire Festival
This is a group name for a number of fire festivals held in Shetland, Scotland, on the last Tuesday of January every year. It marks the end of the Yule season.
Up Helly Aa day involves a series of marches and processions, culminating in a torch-lit procession and the burning of a galley, a traditional ship.
2. Diwali
Diwali, or The Festival of Lights, is India’s biggest festival. On this particular day, as the name suggests, India lights up and looks spectacular. Like the Holi Festival, but on a much bigger scale, Diwali celebrates the triumph of good over evil, light over dark, knowledge over ignorance and hope over despair.
Diwali is celebrated over a five day period, but the main celebrations take place on the darkest night of the Hindu Lunisolar month of Kartika. In terms of the Gregorian calendar, this usually falls on a night somewhere between mid-October and mid-November.
3. Durga and Ganesh Puja India
Bengali Hindus are crazy about the Durga Puja festival, which celebrates the worship of the Hindu Goddess Durga.
To celebrate, Bengali Hindus create statues and likenesses of Durga, which are immersed in sacred waters. There is also a lot of ritual drumming and dancing that makes this vibrant festival deserve its place on this list.
4. Bumba-meu-boi Festival
Bumba-meu-boi is Portuguese for “hit my bull”, and is a Brazilian folk theatrical tradition. It is a tale told through music, costumes and drumming that involves a Bull dying and being brought back to life.
Every region and local festival tells the tale in their own particular way, but there are some characters that appear in all versions. Of course, there is the bull, who usually appears in elaborate costume; Catirina, an ugly pregnant girl generally played by a man in drag; the cowboy who allows the bull to die; the owner of the bull, who is rich and powerful; and the music, a ‘character’ that magically drums the bull back to life.
Crazy Night Festivals
1. Full Moon Party Fest
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This is a popular attraction in Thailand, where the region of Haad Rin hosts the Full Moon Party – an all-night beach party on the island of Kho Pha Ngan before or after the – you guessed it – full moon.
These parties are attended by 3-5000 rather mad people. It constitutes the island’s nightlife capital and has Koh Phangan’s biggest concentration of beach clubs that collectively put on the ultimate travelers’ get together.
Within this transient crowd of party animals, some highly talented DJs pass through, banging out their wares to the raging lunar explorers that have landed on planet party. ITS A PARTY GONE WILD! So if you’re a party animal, this is the place to be.
2. Las Fallas de Valencia
Las Fallas is one of the most unique and crazy night festivals in Spain, a country known for its unique and odd fiestas.
What started as a feast day for St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, has evolved into a five-day, multifaceted celebration involving fire.
Valencia, a quiet city with a population of just over 1 million, swells to an estimated three million flame-loving revelers during Las Fallas celebrations.
3. New Year’s Eve in Australia
New Year’s Eve in Sydney is pretty famous all over world. This festival takes place every New Year’s Eve over Sydney Harbor, centering on the Harbor Bridge.
Its main features are the two pyrotechnic displays, the 9 pm Family Fireworks and the Midnight Fireworks. It is known as the best place in the world to see the New Year fireworks display.
The world is full of weird, crazy and beautiful festivals. These were only few of those. Stay tuned!
