You haven’t attended festivals like these. From jumping over babies to chasing a block of cheese, these festivals will definitely make you scratch your head in wonder. Some are eccentric and some are just downright bizarre – let’s uncover the strangest festivals around the world!
Here are the 8 most unusual festivals around the world
1. Cheese Rolling Festival | Gloucestershire, England, UK
🗓️ Held in May
Every year, on a cold day at the end of May, brave participants gather on Cooper’s Hill to chase down a nine-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese that rolls downhill. As weird and unnecessary as this sounds, this festival is not for the faint-hearted. Running down the hill’s slippery slopes and uneven terrain can often cause injury by tumbling, but that’s not enough to deter these cheeseheads.
Although the cheese can never be caught (it usually reaches breakneck speeds of 80mph), the winner is usually the first person to reach the finish line at the bottom of the hill.
2. Monkey Buffet Festival | Lopburi, Thailand
🗓️ Held in November
Before you begin wondering how monkeys taste, this festival is an annual celebration in honor of the long-tailed macaque monkeys. A grand feast comprising a lavish spread of fruits, veggies, cakes, and candies is prepared and presented to the local monkey population in the hope of bringing good luck and prosperity to the community. After the monkeys have feasted, local artists perform dances.
The festival has its roots in 1989 when a local businessman thought up a unique way to drive tourism in Lopburi, and surprisingly enough, with the monkeys came the tourists!
3. Boryeong Mud Festival | Boryeong, South Korea
🗓️ Held in July
Originally conceived as a marketing event for Boryeong Mud cosmetics, the Boryeong Mud Festival soon became a sensation with locals and tourists alike. While getting down and dirty in mud seems like an odd idea, Boryeong’s mud contains minerals and nutrients that nourish your skin. The locals believe the mud has healing and anti-aging properties.
Lounge in the mudflats, get a muddy massage, participate in mud games, try your hand at mud wrestling, enjoy live music, and experience a plethora of other muddy activities.
4. Underwater Music Festival | Looe Key Reef, Florida, USA
🗓️ Held in July
You must have attended music festivals on big grounds, in parking lots, stadiums, and malls, but this festival takes things to the next level and is probably unlike anything you’ve witnessed before, with its stage set deep underwater in the Florida Keys. Sponsored by a local radio station, participants dress up as creatures of the sea and enjoy submerged melodies while posing with whimsical musical instruments.
The Underwater Music Festival is an annual event that exists to promote environmental sustainability and to raise awareness about responsible diving and coral reef conservation.
5. Cheung Chau Bun Festival | Hong Kong
🗓️ Held in May
According to legends, a century ago, the island of Cheung Chau was badly hit by the plague. As an effort to appease the angry spirits, buns were given as offerings. This soon turned into a long-cherished Hong Kong tradition. Highlights of this unique festival include three 60-foot bamboo towers made of buns, a parade of brightly decorated floats, the Bun Scrambling Competition, and the Climbing Carnival.
The iconic Kwok Kam Kee bakery is the official supplier of buns for the entire festival, making as many buns as 60,000 non-stop to keep up with the demand.
6. La Tomatina Festival | Bunol, Spain
🗓️ Held in August
La Tomatina is a food fight like none other. Over here, festival-goers chuck ripe and mushy tomatoes at one another for hours together. Drawing over 20,000 travelers, this saucy spectacle is a frenzied and one-of-a-kind celebration that originally started as a scuffle during a cultural parade where a market stall of vegetables fell victim to a charged-up crowd.
If you’re worried about food wastage, it’ll help to know that the festival only uses tomatoes that are deemed unfit for consumption so, in essence, the festival reduces waste.
7. San Fermin Festival | Pamplona, Spain
🗓️ Held in July
San Fermin is best known for the Running of the Bulls event. This is an extreme adventure sport that involves outrunning wild and powerful bulls. The event takes place in Pamplona’s main square where attendees dressed in white and red honor Saint Fermin by running with the bulls through the city’s old and narrow streets – a symbol that is associated with his death.
Ever since it was immortalized by Ernst Hemingway in his novel The Sun Also Rises, the Running of the Bulls event has become as popular as it is controversial.
8. The Baby Jumping Festival | Castrillo de Murcia, Spain
🗓️ Held in June
Last but probably the strangest of them all is the Baby Jumping Festival, where a man dressed as a yellow devil terrorizes the crowd before jumping over rows of newborn babies carefully laid out on plush and pillowed mattresses. El Salto del Colacho which translates to “The Devil’s Jump” has been a thing since the 1600s and is a cultural phenomenon that is believed to ward off evil spirits.
The origins of this bizarre tradition remain shrouded in mystery and despite its seemingly hazardous nature, the festival attracts people from all over the world.
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Sukanya Menon
Writer at CuddlyNest
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Last update: 2 September 2024
