Most Unusual Festivals Around The World

The Chap & Hendrick's Olympics

The Chap and Hendrick's Olympics is a hilarious annual London event held in July. Some of the unusual 'sports' include the Three Trousered Limbo and the Hendrick’s Martini Knockout Relay, where three teams compete to mix the perfect dry martini on a bar at the end of a running track. It's a chance for the British to show what they do best: dress inappropriately, drink G&Ts, and make complete buffoons of themselves.

Zombie Walk

A zombie walk (also known as a zombie mob, zombie march, zombie horde, zombie lurch, zombie shuffle or zombie pub crawl) is an organized public gathering of people who dress up in zombie costumes. Usually taking place in an urban centre, the participants make their way around the city streets and through shopping malls in a somewhat orderly fashion and often limping their way towards a local cemetery or other public space

Holi- The Festival of Colors

Originally a festival to celebrate good harvests and fertility of the land, Holi is now a symbolic commemmoration of a legend from Hindu Mythology. The story centres around an arrogant king who resents his son Prahlada worshipping Lord Vishnu. He attempts to kill his son but fails each time. Finally, the king's sister Holika who is said to be immune to burning, sits with the boy in a huge fire. However, the prince Prahlada emerges unscathed, while his aunt burns to death. Holi commemorates this event from mythology, and huge bonfires are burnt on the eve of Holi as its symbolic representation.

The Summer Redneck Games

As legend tells it, Mac Davis and a host of volunteers put together a ridiculous schedule of "Redneck Games" for locals to compete in. They expected a small turnout, some decent weather, and a few laughs..
What they got was a little slice of Dixie magic. "The first year," Davis reminisces, "we expected 500 people to show up. We got 5,000 instead."
All in all, the Redneck Games are just a silly, good time. Though it's gradually expanded in attendance and in popularity over the past decade, the yearly tradition is still as wholesome and pure as it was back in '96.

Tomatina

La Tomatina is a food fight festival held on the last Wednesday of August each year in the town of Buñol in the Valencia region of Spain. Tens of thousands of participants come from all over the world to fight in a brutal battle where more than one hundred metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are thrown in the streets.

Up-Helly-Aa

Up-Helly-Aa is a relatively modern festival. There is some evidence that people in rural Shetland celebrated the 24th day after Christmas as "Antonsmas" or "Up Helly Night", but there is no evidence that their cousins in Lerwick did the same. The emergence of Yuletide and New Year festivities in the town seems to post-date the Napoleonic Wars, when soldiers and sailors came home with rowdy habits and a taste for firearms.

Ivan Kupala Day

Ivan Kupala Day is celebrated in Russia and Ukraine on 7 July in the Gregorian or New Style calendar, which is currently 24 June in the Julian or Old Style calendar still used by many of the Orthodox Churches. It is opposed to the winter solstice holiday, or Korochun.

Monkey Buffet


Every year, all of the province's approximately 600 monkeys are invited to eat fruits and vegetables during an annual feast held in honor of Rama, a hero of the Ramayana, who, it is said, rewarded his friend and ally, Hanuman the Monkey King, with the fiefdom of what is now Lopburi.

Naked Men Festival

The festival is bizarre. There is an erotic element (after all, Shintoism is a religion of fertility); thousands of men clad only in fundoshi (a type of loincloth) and sandals. One source describes it as "homoerotic." The festival is also brutal. Steam rises off of the skin of participants as they wash in freezing water to "purify" themselves and then stand stand, jog, or hop around on one of Japan's coldest nights. The festival can be bloody as well as brutal. Fighting is common among the participants. Japanese beer and rice wine both flow freely and there is party atmosphere complete with fireworks.

Tapati Festival

It involves sliding down a steep hillside on the trunk of a banana tree, wearing little more than a hami (loincloth) and body paint. The contestant who stays on his log to the bottom and who goes the farthest is the winner.