Cheese rolling, baby jumping, tuna fish-tossing – these are just some of the crazy festivals celebrated around the world.
We have taken it upon ourselves to scour the globe, drawing up a list of the world’s five wackiest celebrations to add to your calendar. Check out the world’s most mental festivals below!
5. The Tunarama ‘Tuna Tossing’ Festival in Australia is a fantastic example of utter nonsense. The stars of the show are the hulking great, often heavily-inebriated, macho Australian guys taking it in turns to spin around and around shot putt-style, before flinging tuna fish – that’s right, slippery wet fish – as far as they possibly can. The record fish-putt at the festival, which is meant to promote the town of Port Lincoln’s fishing industry, is a staggering 37.23 meters, set by an Ex-Olympic hammer thrower.
4. The Cheese Rolling Festival in the Cotswolds in England is one of the most puzzling ideas we’ve come across. An incredibly risky venture, it sees a host of madmen race down steep hills and chasing after a rolling cheese, which can reach speeds as high as 70mph. Despite several attempts to ban the festival on safety grounds, participants have simply ignored the ban every year.
3. The Festival of Colors, or Holi, is the most colorful celebration in the world. Held in India and Nepal, the spectacle is an orgy of color that sees hundreds of locals throng to the streets to throw water and colored powders at each other. The festival is held each spring, a time that the locals believe causes colds and fevers to develop due to the weather change. For this reason, the colored powders actually take on a medicinal significance – being made from herbs such as Haldi, Bilva, Neem and Kumkum.
2. The Naked Festival, or Hadakamatsuri as the Japanese say, is not quite as bad as it sounds, although the spectacle of dozens of adult men scrambling around the floor looking for magic amulets while dressed in skimpy loincloths is nevertheless quite an unsettling sight!
Held in several locations throughout the year, we challenge you to take a look and see if you can spot the single fully naked man in amongst the throng – doing so is supposed to bring both good fortune and happiness to those who can, although presumably this is only the case if they get over the initial shock!
1. The Baby-Jumping Festival in Spain has to be one of the craziest ideas of all time. El Colacho, as it’s known at home, sees grown men (who probably should know much better) taking turns to leap over groups of newborn babies in the completely insane belief that they are cleansing the tots of evil spirits. The, which also sees the town’s (irresponsible) adult men dressing up in weird Elvis-like costumes, is widely acknowledged as the world’s most bizarre celebration of Corpus Christi.