Festival in the Desert
Location: Essakane, Mali
Date: Second weekend in January
For three days a year, a desolate patch of Saharan sand, 65km north of Timbuktu, hosts “the world’s most remote music festival”. That’s what the Festival in the Desert bills itself as, and it’s a credible claim. The sandy site is half a day’s 4WD ride, or three days by camel if you have a tough derrière – from a town that is itself synonymous with inaccessibility.
Noche de Brujas (Night of the Witches)
Location: Cerro Mono Blanco, Catemaco, Mexico
Date: First Friday in March
If witches and wizards have a spiritual home it may well be the Mexican town of Catemaco, a pretty place on the shore of Laguna Catemaco. Witchcraft traditions in this part of Mexico go back centuries and in 1970 a local “brujo” (shaman) had the idea to host a witchcraft convention. The idea stuck and now every year hundreds of shamans, witches and healers from all over Mexico descend on Catemaco to perform a mass cleansing ceremony designed to rid them of the previous year’s negative energies.
Expect more “Bewitched” than “The Blair Witch Project”, with the event having become very commercial and conscious of the tourism that has sprung up around it.
Carnevale Venezia (Venice Carnival)
Location: Venice, Italy. Piazza San Marco is the focus of the festival.
Date: Begins two Fridays before Ash Wednesday, finishing on Shrove Tuesday.
The high point of Venice’s social calendar, Carnevale is a masked extravaganza, and your chance to spend 12 days looking like the Phantom of the Opera. The world’s best known fancy-dress party, it’s as extravagant as Rio’s Carnaval is riotous, celebrating the approach of spring with refined gusto.
Naghol (Land diving)
Location: Pentecost Island, Vanuatu
Date: Diving ceremonies usually take place each Saturday through April and May
When the yam crop emerges in early April on the Vanuatu island of Pentecost, the southern islanders begin to build high wooden towers. Once completed, and until about the end of May, village men and boys dive from these rickety structures with only two vines attached to their ankles to break their fall (yes, “naghol” was the inspiration for bungee jumping). To do it right, the divers hair should touch the soil, said to fertilise the ground and guaranteeing a bountiful yam harvest.
Cooper’s Hill cheese rolling
Location: Cooper’s Hill, Brockworth, England
Date: Last Monday in May
You may have thought the most dangerous thing about cheese was the mould, but then you’ve probably never stood atop Cooper’s Hill on this mad Monday. The premise is simple: a handmade, seven pound circle of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled down the hill and a gaggle of people chase down behind it. The first to the bottom of the hill (or to grab the cheese) wins, and gets to keep the cheese. Which does nothing to explain the mud, the slippery grass, the slope and the injury toll.
Regatta of St Ranieri in Pisa, Italy
Location: Palazzo Medici, Pisa, Italy
Date: June 17
Venice may be famous for its gondolas, but across the country, Pisa stages this 1,500m dash up the River Arno, a tradition dating to the 1920s. The four narrow rowboats, differently coloured to represent the city’s four districts, each contain a steersman, a climber, and eight oarsmen struggling against the current.
Burning Man
Location: Black Rock Desert, Gerlach, Nevada
Dates: Week prior to and including Labor Day weekend (first Monday in September)
Burning Man is more than a festival: it’s a utopian society that springs up on the cracked terrain of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The survivalist happening’s 10 principles include radical self-reliance, radical self expression, communal effort and, above all, participation.
These 10 hippy commandments lead to a 45,000-strong “city” where inhibitions are left at the gates and freakery courses along the dusty streets. A week of art, exhibitionism, parades and music climaxes with the incineration of the Man, a fitting end to a festival where flame-throwers regularly split the night sky.
Durbar
Location: Emir Palace Rd, Kano, Nigeria
Dates: End of Ramadan
The Durbar festival is celebrated at the culmination of the two great Muslim festivals Eid al Fitr and Eid al Kabir (Eid al Adha). On the big day, in Katsina and Kano, there is a parade of ornately dressed horsemen, Emirs dressed in ceremonial robes, muscle-bound wrestlers and lute players in headdresses.
Festes de La Mercè
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Dates: Four days around 24 September
The Catalan capital’s “festa major”, a final burst of pre-winter madness for the Mediterranean city, is dedicated to its co-patron saint, the Virgin of Mercy. Some 600 events take place, most of them in the city centre. There’s a swimming race across the harbour, a fun run and a series of free concerts.
Fiesta de Santo Tomás
Location: Town Plaza, Chichicastenango, Guatemala
Dates: December 13-21
The highland city of Chichicastenango (Chichi) celebrates its patron saint in a rather death-defying way. For a week festivities are limited to typical festival events – parades, traditional dances, fireworks – but on December 21 (St Thomas’ Day) things look up, literally. On this day, wooden poles as high as 30m are raised in the plaza besides the Iglesia de Santo Tomás and the dance of the “palo volador” (flying pole) begins.Two ropes hang from the top of each pole and the “palo valador” dancers ascend in pairs, scaling the poles on wooden steps and tying ropes around their bodies. Then they leap, swirling around the pole at high speed, the ropes unravelling as they go, lowering them to the ground. Some hang onto the rope with their hands, and others tie it around their ankles. It’s like bungee jumping for the faithful.
From 'A year of festivals' published by Lonely Planet