Thaipusam:(Hindu Hook Piercing Festival)
This festival is celebrated mainly by the Tamil speaking community settled in southern India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka and elsewhere around the world. Many fanatical devotees go to such extent as to torture their bodies to appease the Lord. So, a major feature of Thaipusam celebrations is body piercing with hooks, skewers and small lances called 'vel'. Many of these devotees even pull chariots and heavy objects with hooks attached to their bodies. Many others pierce their tongue and cheek to impede speech and thereby attain full concentration on the Lord. Most devotees enter into a trance during such piercing due to the incessant drumming and chanting of "vel vel shakti vel".
Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festival In Japan)
A hadaka matsuri(meaning-naked festival) is a type of Japanese festival, or matsuri, where participants wear a minimum amount of clothing; usually just a Japanese loincloth (called fundoshi), sometimes with a short happi coat, and very rarely completely naked. Whatever the clothing, it is considered to be above vulgar, or everyday, undergarments, and on the level of holy Japanese shrine attire.
Naked festivals are held in dozens of places throughout Japan every year, usually in the summer or winter.
El Colacho: (the Baby-Jumping Festival in Spain)
In celebration of the Catholic festival of Corpus Christi, grown men leap over newborns, with full parental consent. Donning scary, vaguely Elvis-like costumes and wielding whips and truncheons, the men attempt to "cleanse" the babies of evil. Evidently, recklessly leaping over them is the best way to achieve this. The town has observed the strange practice (called El Colacho) since 1620, and any onlookers who seem to be in need of a quick exorcism are pulled into the event, as well -- so look normal, by God! And leave your babies with the sitter
La Tomatina - Valencia, Spain
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.
The week-long festival features music, parades, dancing, and fireworks. On the night before the tomato fight, participants of the festival compete in a paella cooking contest.
Approximately 20,000–40,000 tourists come to the tomato fight, multiplying by several times Buñol's normal population of slightly over 9,000. There is limited accommodation for people who come to La Tomatina, and thus many participants stay in Valencia and travel by bus or train to Buñol, about 38 km outside the city. In preparation for the dirty mess that will ensue, shopkeepers use huge plastic covers on their storefronts in order to protect them from the carnage.
The Monkey Buffet Festival (Thailand)
Every year, the town of Lopburi in Thailand hosts a special outdoor feast. The guests of honour climb all over the food, steal treats from each other, and toss their leftovers onto the ground. After the meal, some of the guests show their gratitude by pulling hair and stealing earrings from the hosts while others make love in public.
The "invitations" at this annual extravaganza go to the town's estimated 600 monkeys. They are Lopburi's blessing and its bane. According to legend, the hero of the Ramayana epic rewarded his friend and ally, Hanuman the Monkey King, with the fiefdom of what is now Lopburi. Centuries later, monkeys still rule the area around the town's two most sacred sites: The picturesque Khmer ruin of Sam Prang Yod and the nearby shrine of San Pra Kan.
Kanamara Matsuri: (Fertility festival in Japan)
The Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus) is an annual Shinto fertility festival held in Kawasaki, Japan in spring. The exact dates vary: the main festivities fall on the first Sunday in April. The penis forms the central theme of the event that is reflected everywhere—in illustrations, candy, carved vegetables, decorations, and a mikoshi parade.
The Kanamara Matsuri is centered around a local penis-venerating shrine once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. It is said that there are divine protections also in business prosperity and the clan's prosperity, easy delivery, marriage, and married couple harmony. There is also a legend of a demon that hid inside a young girl and castrated two young men on their wedding nights before a blacksmith fashioned an iron phallus to break the demon's teeth, leading to the enshrinement of the item.
Today, the festival is used to raise money for HIV research.
Many travellers from Europe or US visit and attend the festival
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