Festivals are the most celebrated and enchanted events. They bring an energetic break to monotonous and routine life. There are a lot of fabulous and unique festivals that are celebrated around the world. In this article, we will highlight those festivals which are most breathtaking around the world. These are the festivals in which millions of people around the world gather to party, drink and dance and enjoy the best they can. Here are the details of top 10 festivals in the world. We hope it will bring you immense interest that you will go crazy to attend all of them.
1. The Rio de Janeiro Carnival
The world most famous and most wild festival, the Rio de Janeiro Carnival is held in Brazil. It is celebrated throughout the villages and towns of Brazil. It is also celebrated in other Catholic countries as well. Rio de Janeiro is considered as World’s Carnival Capital. Besides being the biggest carnival of the world, it is benchmark and compared with all other carnivals held around the world. The carnival starts before Lent each year with more than two million people on streets each day. Held first time in 1823, Rio parade is full of floats, revelers and decorations from several samba schools situated in Rio. Among the most interesting artistic events, Rio is visited by more than 5 lac foreigners each year. It is the World’s largest number of foreigners in any event.
2. Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year is the prime holiday with lanterns, symbolic clothing, fireworks, flowers, dragons and celebrations. It is the most significant and important day in Chinese calendar. It is also known as the Spring Festival. The festivities start from Chinese New Year’s Eve to the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of first month. This makes it a longest festival in China. People clean their houses and put red posters to their doors on which poetic verses are displayed. They adorn their houses with red lanterns and put New Year pictures on walls. This festival is considered a time to reunite with families. So people use to wear new clothes and visit their families. Children are paid “Luck” money. People set off firecrackers and fireworks with the hope of casting away bad luck and bring good luck. Activities like lion and dragon dances, striking gongs and beating drums are the key characteristics of this festival. Thousands of people around the world visit Chinese New Year each year.
3. Boryeong Mud Festival
No. 3 on the list of top 10 festivals in the world, comes Boryeong Mud Festival. It takes place in Boryeong which is a town 200 km South of Seoul, South Korea. The first festival took place in 1988. It is said that it was a promotional campaign of a cosmetic brand which uses mud from Boryeong mud flats in its products. There were 2.2 million people who attended the festival. The minerals rich mud is brought in “Mud Experience Land”, an area near Daecheon beach, via trucks. The festival starts with a fresh look but it doesn’t stay long as participants indulge all muddy activities including massages, slides, face painting and mud wrestling, mud pools, mud prisons and mud skiing. Besides, you can enjoy the fireworks and live music. If tired of being muddy, the sea is a stone’s throw away. The Boryeong Mud festival has been celebrated for 18 years and there were more than 3.2 million people in last year festival.
4. Burning Man
Conducted in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, Burning Man is the top famous festival of USA. Like above stated festivals, it is not a smooth, easy and sophisticated festival. Here in Burning man, in absence of any water and power availability, a great Black Rock City is built which becomes the 10th largest city in Nevada. The festival is visited by America’s elite like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Mush and Sergy Brin. This festival is full of a lot of notable things including free massages and hugs, nudity, memorial and wedding ceremonies, world famous DJs playing on Vegas style sound system, tractors and buses turned into party yachts, shocking art cars, fire breathing dragons and generous offerings of alcohol and food to strangers. This year in 2015, more than 70,000 people attended this event including Shanina Shaik, Katy Perry and Susan Sarandon.
5. La Tomatina
The food fight festival La Tomatina is held on August last Wednesday each year. It is conducted in Bunol, Spain. More than 100 metric tons over ripe tomatoes are thrown in streets where thousands of people make their way to be the part of festival. With tomato juice spreading all across the streets, the World’s Biggest Food Fight Festival starts in town square. A central pole is erected which is covered with soap having a leg of ham at its top. The people in crowd try to climb up the pole in order to retrieve the ham while the observers throw water on the crowd from balconies. Then a gun is shot as a signal of beginning of fight. Big trucks carrying huge amount of tomaotes appear. People need to grab those tomatoes as their ammunition and cover each other until the gunfire shot again and ends the event. Before 2013, more than 40,000 people used to participate in La Tomatina. But from 2013, the tickets are limited to 20,000 people only.
6. Songkran
Songkran is the number 6 festival on our list. It is celebrated in Thailand at New Year. Thai New Year starts in the second week of April. According to Thailand weather, April is the hottest time of the year. Therefore, the festival comprises of throwing a lot of water on people. Soaking is supposed to be a biggest blessing here in Thailand and it is considered a sacred practice. When the event was introduced in some early times, the traditional practice was to pour perfumed water on each other hands. It was a sign of washing away all your sins and misdeeds. But by the passage of time, Thais of all ages involve themselves in full gusted water combats. They use hoses, buckets and water guns to celebrate the Songkran.
7. Encierro
7 on our list is Encierro or Running of the Bulls. It is the most famous part of San Fermin festival, Spain. The event includes a practice in which people use to run in front of a small group of bulls which number nearly up to one dozen. The bulls have been let loose on a sequence of a sectioned off subdivision of streets of a town. The first rocket is set off in order to alert he runners that corral gate has been opened. Second rocket is set off when all 6 bulls are released. When the entire herd enters the bull ring and its corral, the final rocket is set off signaling the end of event. About 200-300 people get injured each year during the run but they appear with more enthusiasm next year. The injuries are anyhow not fatal.
8. Holi
The festival of Holy is celebrated in India, in last days of February or early days of March. It is a two days event which is celebrated in the memory of Prahald. Prahald was a follower of god Vishnu who escaped undamaged from the fire of Holika Dahan. The event is celebrated by lighting bonfires and partying wildly by throwing perfumed color powder on each other. Children use to fill their pistol toys with colored water and shot at passerby. This is called pichkari. This jubilant celebration of the victory of good over evil is a get-together of people of all ages and all social statuses. Holi comes at number 9 on our list of top 10 festivals in the world.
9. Full Moon Party
The Full Moon Party in Thailand is celebrated at the night before or after the full moon. Haad Rin, the home to this party enclosing around 35,000 mad people who drop in to clubs and bars along the beach. They dance wildly and indulge in alcohol sold in buckets. Huge sound systems are placed alongside the beach and the revelers enjoy different range of music from house to trance and R&B. Highly artistic DJ’s pass through, beating out their sounds to rampant lunar explorers that use to land on planet party. If you are a party animal, you must visit Full Moon Party before you die. Full Moon Party stands at no. 9 on the list of top 10 festivals in the world.
10. Oktoberfest
No. 10 on our list is Oktoberfest, the largest beer festival in the world. The festival is held in Munich, an area of Bavaria in Germany. The 16 days long festival is celebrated from last days of September to early October. More than six million people from all over the world visit Germany in order to enjoy this event. The event is solely about beer and only beer. Sizzling and sensational waitresses serve huge glasses of beer to a large amount of revelers. You are free to toast your beer and share it with anyone you want. People come here to meet each other, sit together, mingle with strangers, do fun with their friends and live the best of their life.
