The best thing about traveling is finding out the weird stuff that our global neighbors get up to, not to mention finding out what we do that they think is strange. Here’s a great run-down of the world’s weirdest festivals, from the awesome to the WTF. Festivals dedicated to throwing food makes perfect sense, but how people started handing babies to sumo wrestlers so that they can make the infants cry is utterly beyond me.
I’d like to throw a couple honorable mentions in here, too. First up, Holi, the Hindu festival of colors. Holi is a celebration of the triumph of good over evil that sees thousands of revelers across the world dancing and singing and laughing and throwing brightly colored powdered dyes on each other.
Second, I feel like I’ve got to mention Burning Man. Burning Man is a festival pretty much dedicated to being as weird as possible. The official beginner’s guide even says that the festival is “not for the faint of heart.”