It’s said that there is someone for everyone, and maybe the same could be said about festivals. If you want to have a real great time, if plunging into the world’s odd and wacky is your flavor, then check out these bizarre celebrations around the world. You wouldn’t believe what some people do for fun. At TrendingPost we bring you the 30 most bizarre festivals in the world that you wouldn’t want to miss.
1. La Tomatina (Spain)
La Tomatina is a festival that is held in the Valencian town of Buñol, in which participants throw tomatoes and get involved in this tomato fight purely for fun. It is held on the last Wednesday of August, during the week of festivities of Buñol.
2. Boryeong Mud Festival (South Korea)
The Boryeong Mud Festival is an annual festival which takes place during the summer in Boryeong, a town south of Seoul, South Korea. For the period of the festival several large attractions are erected in the seafront area of Daecheon. These include a mud pool, mud slides, mud prison and mud skiing competitions. Colored mud is also produced for body painting. A large stage is erected on the beach, which is used for live music, competitions and various other visual attractions.
3. Thaipusam (India)
Thaipusam is a Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community on the full moon in the Tamil month of Thai (January/February). At its simplest this may entail carrying a pot of milk, but mortification of the flesh by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with vel skewers is also common, and this is why it makes it to our list of most bizarre festivals in the world that you wouldn’t want to miss.
4. The Monkey Buffet Festival (Thailand)
The Monkey Buffet Festival is held annually in Thailand to promote tourism. The festival was described as one of the strangest festivals by London’s The Guardian newspaper.
5. Burning Tar Barrel Festival
The Tar Barrel tradition is hundreds of years old. The exact origins are unknown but probably started after the gunpowder plot of 1605. The West Country has a history of torchlight processions and burning barrels and Ottery was only one of the many towns and villages following an annual tradition containing barrels which were rolled in the streets on November 5th each year. Somewhere along the line someone decided rolling was tame and carrying barrels on your shoulders was far more appealing and so the present tradition was born and now Ottery is the only Town in the country carrying full sized lighted tar barrels through the streets.
6. Frozen Dead Guy Days (USA)
Frozen Dead Guy Days (started 2002) is an annual celebration held in the town of Nederland, Colorado, to loosely celebrate, through a theme of frozen/ice/blue/winter, the 1994 discovery of the cryonic state corpse of Bredo Morstel.
7. Holi (India)
Holi is a spring festival also known as the festival of colours or the festival of love. Holi celebrations start with a Holika bonfire on the night before Holi where people gather, sing and dance. The next morning is a free-for-all carnival of colours, where participants play, chase and colour each other with dry powder and coloured water, with some carrying water guns and coloured water-filled balloons for their water fight.
8. Cheese Rolling Festival (England)
The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake is an annual event held on the Spring Bank Holiday at Cooper’s Hill, near Gloucester in England. From the top of the hill a 9 lb round of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled, and competitors race down the hill after it. The first person over the finish line at the bottom of the hill wins the cheese.
9. Argungu Fishing Festival
The Argungu Fishing Festival is an annual four-day festival in north-western Nigerian state of Kebbi. On the final day of the festival, a competition is held in which thousands of men and women line up along the river and at the sound of a gunshot, all of them jump into the river and have an hour to catch the largest fish. The winner can take home as much as 7,500 US dollars. Competitors are only allowed to use traditional fishing tools and many prefer to catch fish entirely by hand to demonstrate their prowess.
10. The Redneck Games (USA)
The Redneck Games are held in East Dublin, Georgia annually. The games were started by Elbow, a local person who was the general manager of radio station WQZY-FM “Y96â€. In 1996 when the Olympics were held in Atlanta, some locals took offense to the fact that the international media portrayed them as a “bunch of rednecks holding a sporting event.†As a result they ended up doing just that. Some of the events include toilet seat throwing, hubcap hurling, and the armpit serenade.
