Five Weird Festivals You Must Attend Once in Your Lifetime

What’s your favourite part of a festival? The sweets? The gifts? The lights? What else? Where’s the crazy fun part? Like when you fill balloons with coloured water and throw it at random people on Holi. Or dress up as Catwoman on Halloween?

Here are some other wild and wacky festivals around the globe that you must attend once in a lifetime. If you want a normal dull life, become a banker, and buy sweets on every festival. If you want to do yourself a favour, go and attend any or all of these.

La Tomatina, Buñol

This is perhaps the most well-known of the list. And its popularity soared way before Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Throwing tomatoes at each other is fun, right? And to add to the irresistibility of it all, the target of those tomatoes are well-toned waxed bodies.

When: Held every year on the last Wednesday of August

Tip: Get a full body wax done before you go, more so if your body takes after Anil Kapoor.                                                                  .

Wife Carrying Championship, Finland

Every man must bear the weight of his deeds. Or in this case, his wife. Each participant is required to run a distance of 254 metres carrying his wife. The festival is becoming extremely popular among couples. It is a rather unique activity for couples to have a fun time  together.

Two rules you should know:

1. The wife to be carried may be your own, or thy neighbour’s…
2. If a contestant drops the wife, God bless him, he has to lift her back in his arms
   and continue the race.

When: July

Don’t say: “Jiski biwi moti, uska bhi bada naam hai” (He whose wife is fat, can also be a successful man in the world).

International Bognor Birdman, England

Before aeroplanes were discovered, many a curious soul jumped off from his balcony with artificial wings in an attempt to fly. They met with their deaths. Don’t worry, nobody dies in this festival. The height from which one has to jump off is merely

You put on human-powered flying machines (just a fancy name for fancy-looking manmade wings), and jump off a pier overlooking the sea.

When: July-August

Interesting trivia: All participants indulge in some narcissist drama before they jump. Some act like Superman, some like Tarzan. Don’t believe us? See for yourself:

Mud Festival, South Korea

This is when you play Holi with mud. mud festival of Boreyeong comes from the Boreyeong mud flats, known for their mineral rich deposits. This mud, being highly beneficial for skin, is used to make cosmetics. In fact, the festival started as part of a marketing strategy in 2009.

Where: Boreyeong, 200 km south of Seoul in South Korea                                                                                                                                              .

When: Summer

What to do: Be a little cheap and take some empty jars and fill ‘em up with Boreyeong mud to take back home.

 

Battle of Oranges, Italy

Now this might hurt. Tomatoes were fine, but oranges? Seriously?

Yes, it’s total mayhem out here. People throw oranges at each other. It’s war. The participants are divided into combat groups hurling oranges at each other. They say initially they threw beans, then switched to apples (ow!), and only in the 19^th century did the oranges appear. It is the largest food fight in Italy.

The story behind the festival:

Once upon a time, in the beautiful Italian city of Ivrea, there lived a tyrant duke who used to kidnap women on the eve of their wedding and defile them before their wedding night. Our heroine, Violetta, who was a miller’s daughter, decided enough was enough. And so when the duke tried to rape her on her wedding eve, she beheaded him. And since then, the festival is celebrated, the oranges symbolizing the tyrant’s head.

When: February                                                                                                                                             .

What to do during the festival: Catch every orange hurled at you, and eat it up!

That was our list of crazy fun festivals around the world. Do you know of any other? Tell us in the comments section!