(Image: Jpereira)
The global festival scene is known for throwing up some pretty odd experiences. Festivals on boats, festivals in ice, festivals like Burning Man in the middle of the desert. For the dedicated festival-goer, there are plenty of unusual experiences waiting out there. But sometimes, ‘unusual’ isn’t enough. For those of us who crave something truly unique, here are ten global offbeat festivals unlike anything else on earth.
Turning of the Bones (Madagascar)
When loved ones die in Western culture, we tend to grieve and then move on, maybe visiting the cemetery once a year to pay our respects.
(Image: Saveoursmile)
By contrast, the Malagasy people of Madagascar like to keep things fresh in their minds. Every seven years, vast extended family networks gather to remove deceased relatives from crypts and take their bodies dancing. Known as Famadihana or the Turning of the Bones, the festival is as morbid as it sounds. The bodies of the dead are brought into the daylight, and re-wrapped in a new shroud to last them the next seven years. Music is then played, and the body passed around in a ritual dance before finally being taken back to the crypt.
While it sounds creepy, Famadihana is actually rather poignant. For the Malagasy, a dead relative hasn’t moved on from this world until they’ve completely decomposed. The festival is a means of showing respect to those still on this earth, and a way for younger generations to remember their forebears.
Rapa das Bestas (Spain)
There’s only one way to describe the annual Rapa das Bestas festival in Galicia, Spain. It’s the festival where drunken men literally wrestle wild horses.
(Image: Dani_vr)
Translated as “capturing the beasts,” the festival started some 400 years ago as a way to keep track of the region’s wild horses. It also improved hygiene, as each captured beast was shaved and cleaned. Today, however, any semblance of practicality has gone out the window. Instead, drunkenness reigns supreme. At the start of the festival, Galicia’s local men get highly intoxicated and make their way into the nearby mountains.
There they locate the horses and chase them down into the town, where they wrestle the beasts to the ground with their bare hands and give them a hearty shaving. Although the festival is deeply traditional, a number of animal rights groups have taken issue with it over the years, claiming the horses suffer distress. Given Spain’s infatuation with animal sports though, it’s unlikely to be banned any time soon.
The Hungry Ghost Festival (Southeast Asia)
Not all unusual festivals are niche concerns attended by a few thousand. The Hungry Ghost Festival (sometimes known simply as Ghost Festival) in Southeast Asia is widely-observed by millions of people. Yet it remains an undoubtedly strange, powerful experience.
(Image: Sampuna)
Held on the 15th day of the 7th month, the festival marks a time when the walls between this world and the afterlife temporarily break down, allowing the dead to roam the streets. For observers, this means burning joss sticks, making food offerings to ancestors’ ghosts, and burning tiny papier-mâché figures of worldly goods. These unusual paper offerings are thought to take the place of real-world goods. If you burn a paper sportscar in the here and now, you can rest assured your long-dead great grandfather will soon be zooming around the afterlife in it. Over the years, this has led to some strange offerings being made.
For travellers, the particulars of the festival will change depending on where you are. In Malaysia, there’s a focus on singing and concerts, while in Thailand the entire month is marked by lantern processions and parades. What never changes is the exciting, haunting atmosphere that accompanies it all.
Camel Wrestling Championship (Turkey)
Believe it or not, humans aren’t the only species that enjoy a spot of wrestling. While Spanish horses might not think much of the sport, there’s one animal out there that’s so enamoured it’lltake part even without human interference: the camel.
(Image: Jose Alemañ Asensi)
When two males find themselves near a female in heat, their natural response is to fight for her. Unlike most mammals, this urge manifests itself in using their necks to try and force the other to the ground. So spectacular is this sight, nomads have been arranging fights between camels since before records began. However, it’s only in the last few years that anyone decided to turn it into a tournament.
In 1982, Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism created the first modern camel wrestling tournament. Today, the show attracts crowds of 20,000 from all around the world, desperate to see two manly camels duke it out.
Lantern Floating (Hawaii)
Imagine standing on the edges of a darkened shore and staring out across the vast Pacific. Now imagine the water is dotted by hundreds, no thousands, of tiny pinpricks of light, bobbing, ducking, weaving. Now imagine the air around you is filled with faint and mystical chanting. Welcome to Hawaii’s Lantern Floating Festival.
(Image: Joel)
Started only 16 years ago, in 1999, Lantern Floating has since become one of Hawaii’s major cultural events. Every year, thousands of people gather at Ala Moana Beach to mourn those who died serving their country. As the sun starts to slip below the horizon, a conch shell is sounded, fires lit, and petals strewn across the sand. Then a bell is rung and lighted lanterns placed on boats to be pushed out to sea. The effect is magical, to say the least. Combined with the sunset, the lights make the whole bay appear as if it is glowing, giving the beach a mystical air most tourists to Hawaii seldom experience.
Monkey Buffet Festival (Thailand)
The Monkey Buffet Festival is one of those rare events that does exactly what it says on the tin. Taking place in the province of Lopburi in Thailand each year, it features a gigantic buffet of food. All of which is eaten by thousands of monkeys.
(Image: Chris Gusen)
The buffet alone is a sight to behold. Spread out on mats in front of temples, and stretching on for miles and miles, it features some 4,000 kilogrammes of food. There are mountains of fruits, piles of cakes, pyramids of vegetables and endless, sprawling waves of candy bars. However, the real treat comes after the food is laid out. In front of hordes of onlookers, over three thousand monkeys descend on the buffet; crawling over every inch of the city to get a quick bite of delicious free grub. Despite seeming to be an ancient tradition, the monkey buffet festival is actually a modern invention. It was started by a local businessman in 1989 as a way of luring tourists to the province. As the pictures above attest, it certainly worked.
La Tomatina (Various, Originally Spain)
The residents of Buñol in Spain have a curious way of unwinding. Every year on the last Wednesday in August, they take to the streets en-masse to pelt each other with handfuls of overripe tomatoes.
(Image: Graham McLellan)
According to the story’s accepted origin, the festival was created by happy accident. In the 1950s, a group of young boys disrupted the town’s annual parade. When a fight broke out, local residents eagerly rushed a tomato stall and started a small food fight. The next year, a group of men bought tomatoes to the parade specifically for fighting with. And a legend, so the locals say, was born.
Whatever its origins, today La Tomatina is one of the biggest cultural events in Valencia. Thousands pour into Buñol to hurl fruit at each other, and entire truckloads of tomatoes are shipped in specially. The entire festival lasts a mere hour, but in that time alone its estimated some 40 tons of tomatoes are thrown – resulting in the town square becoming ankle-deep in tomato juice. The festival has even made its way to other places. Colombia, Chile, China and parts of the US all hold annual tomato festivals just as crazy as the one in Spain.
La Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme (Spain)
When your festival name translates as ‘festival of near-death experiences’, you know you’re in for something unusual. Held annually in remote Las Nieves, Spain, the festival is intended to honour those who narrowly escaped death in the previous year. They do so by placing those lucky enough to have survived into coffins and parading them through the town.
(Image: Gabriel González)
The origins of this particular festival have been lost to time, but it’s probably related to pagan celebrations the Catholic Church managed to stamp out in most places. However, that doesn’t stop it having an oddly modern feel. Some of the key elements of the parade are fireworks and loud music, and it’s not unusual to see someone in a coffin taking a selfie as they go. Strictly speaking, it’s a celebration of life, though we can’t be the only ones to question whether putting someone in a coffin is the best way to do that. There’s even a slightly unfair aspect to the parade. If you were lucky enough to cheat death but don’t have any remaining family, you’ll have to carry your coffin all by yourself.
Boryeong Mud Festival (South Korea)
Lying 200km south of Seoul, Boryeong is usually an regular town where little out of the ordinary tends to happen. For two weeks every summer, though, mud is king.
(Image: Shawn Perez)
Since 1998, festival organizers have been trucking in tons of the stuff from the area’s mud flats for locals to cavort in. Today, it’s a tourist magnet unlike any other. According to some estimates, as many as two million people take part each year. And while many attractions focus on less-surprising stuff like mud wrestling and mud slides, the level of creativity on display is sometimes outstanding.
Previous years have seen everything from mud-skiing, to mud body painting, to a prison made entirely of mud. There’s also plenty of alcohol and music, just in case anyone forgot they were at a proper festival. It might not be traditional in any sense of the word, but if you like your music loud and muddy and have forsaken Glastonbury this year, Boryeong could well be for you.
Day of the Dead (Mexico)
One of the grandest, most-famous celebrations on Earth, Mexico’s Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos, is an experience unlike any other.
(Image: Jaredzimmerman)
Lasting three whole days in early November, it features explosions of flowers, parades of enormous Grim Reaper characters, and more strange and solemn rites than you can shake a stick at. So precious is this cultural touchstone that UNESCO inscribed it on their register in 2008, protecting it for future generations. Although it takes place throughout Mexico, the Day of the Dead varies greatly from one region to another. In some towns, it’s a lively affair. In others, somber.
(Image: Jordi Cueto-Felgueroso Arocha)
At Michoacán on the island of Janitzio, it’s morphed into a full-blown tourist attraction; as hundreds of families enter the cemetery in the night to place candles on graves. In Xico in Veracruz, large carpets of flower petals are laid out in multi-coloured hues. Meanwhile, Oaxaca’s night time parades retain a spooky, mystical air.
However, there’s no one right way to do Day of the Dead. Wherever you are in the country, you can be guaranteed a three day festival to remember. Is it the weirdest on our list? Probably not. Is it the greatest? Undoubtedly.
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