Showing posts with the label Festival

Da Shuhua: Fireworks of Molten Iron

Feb 16, 2024

For five centuries, the inhabitants of Nuanquan village in Yu County, in the northwestern reaches of Hebei province, China, have marked the ...

Pidakala War: The Cow Dung Fight

Jul 12, 2023

The Hindu new year or Baisakhi is celebrated throughout India in mid-April. The celebrations vary across states and from culture to culture,...

Nyepi: Bali’s Day of Silence

Apr 3, 2020

Every year, towards the end of March, the entire island of Bali in Indonesia, goes into standstill. Flights are grounded, shops remain close...

The Frost Fairs of River Thames

Apr 7, 2018

Between the 13th and the 19th centuries, the northern hemisphere was in the grip of a “Little Ice Age”. Temperatures dropped worldwide as su...

The Art of Well Dressing

Nov 2, 2017

Every year throughout summer many villages in Derbyshire and Staffordshire decorate their wells and water sources—a custom known as well dre...

Rivers of Blood: The Aftermath of Eid al-Adha in Dhaka

Oct 5, 2017

Early last month, a macabre image of a little girl posing in what appears to be a street flooded with blood-stained rainwater went viral ove...

Kattenstoet: The Cat Throwing Festival

Jul 25, 2017

For the last sixty years, the city of Ypres in Belgium has held a popular “Cat Parade” that draws visitors from around the country. Kattenst...

The Festival of Exploding Sledgehammers

Apr 1, 2017

Every February, residents of the tiny town of San Juan de la Vega in Mexico perform the re-enactment of a four hundred year-old battle that ...

Operation Christmas Drop

Dec 23, 2016

For the last sixty four years the US army has been playing Santa Claus to some 20,000 people inhabiting dozens of tiny Micronesian islands s...

Gävle Goat: The Christmas Goat That Vandals Can’t Keep Their Hands Off

Dec 23, 2016

Every year for Advent, about a month before Christmas, the town of Gavle, in Sweden, builds a giant Christmas goat out of straw. And every y...