The Most Extraordinary Cultural Festivals Around the World

There are moments in travel that you cannot plan for. Moments that arrive unexpectedly, that pull you out of the role of observer and place you, suddenly and completely, inside something larger than yourself. A crowd moving as one. Music that you feel in your chest before you hear it with your ears. Color and light and sound and the particular electricity of thousands of human beings sharing a single experience, at a single moment in time. These are the moments that the world's great cultural festivals offer. And today, we are going to take you inside the most extraordinary ones. The celebrations that have been happening for centuries. That carry within them, the history and the soul of the cultures that created them. And that offer the traveler who is lucky enough, to witness them something that no museum, no guide book, and no photograph can fully prepare you for. Let's go. Let's begin in India, because India contains within its borders a tradition of festival and celebration, that is unlike almost anything else on earth. And among all of India's extraordinary festivals, there is one that has captured the imagination of the entire world. Holi, the festival of colors. Holi is celebrated across India and Nepal in the spring, typically in March, and it marks the arrival of the new season with an explosion of color, that is one of the most visually extraordinary events in the world. The festival has its roots in ancient Hindu tradition, in stories of good overcoming evil, of the triumph of spring over winter, of the renewal that comes with the turning of the year. But for the traveler who witnesses it, Holi is something more immediate and more visceral than any story. It is the experience of standing in a street as the celebration begins, and watching the air itself transform, clouds of vivid powder in pink and yellow and green and red, filling the space between buildings, landing on every surface, on every face, on every piece of clothing in sight. Within minutes, every person in the street is covered in color, and the color, somehow, does what it has always done, it dissolves the ordinary boundaries between people. Strangers become friends, difference becomes irrelevant, and the street becomes a single joyful community, that exists, for this one extraordinary morning, outside the ordinary rules of daily life. The sound of Holi is as extraordinary as the sight of it. Music fills every street, traditional instruments mixed with modern sound systems, rhythms that change from neighborhood to neighborhood, from city to and the laughter, the particular, uncontrollable laughter, that happens when a cloud of bright pink powder lands unexpectedly on your face, and then on your neighbor's face, and then on the face of a complete stranger, who is laughing so hard they can barely stand. From India, let's travel to Japan, to a festival that could not be more different in character from Holi, but that achieves, in its own way, the same extraordinary quality of beauty and communal feeling. The cherry blossom season, Hanami. Hanami, which translates literally as flower viewing, is not a single event but a season, a cultural tradition, and a way of being present to the world that is specific to Japan and deeply embedded in the Japanese understanding of beauty and time. Every spring, when the cherry trees bloom, for a window of approximately two weeks, that varies by region and by year, the Japanese gather in parks and along riverbanks and beneath the blossoming trees to sit, to share food, to talk, to be together under the falling petals. The cherry blossom is central to Japanese aesthetics, it appears in art, in poetry, in music, in everything. And the reason it matters so much is not simply that it is beautiful, though it is extraordinarily beautiful, the trees covered in clouds of pale pink and white that catch the light in a way that seems almost luminous. The reason it matters, is that it The blossoms last for two weeks, sometimes less. A single rainstorm or a sudden wind can end the season almost overnight. And that impermanence, the Japanese concept of mono no aware, the bittersweet awareness of the transience of beautiful things, is at the heart of why Hanami matters so deeply. You are not just looking at flowers, you are practicing the art of paying full attention to something beautiful, knowing that it will not last. Traveling to Japan during the cherry blossom season, sitting under a blossoming tree in one of Tokyo's great parks, with the petals falling in a slow, continuous drift in the sky visible in fragments through the pink canopy above, is one of the most peaceful and most beautiful travel experiences in the world. Now let's travel to West Africa, to a celebration that has been described as the greatest festival of African culture in the world, the Festival on the Niger, in Segu, Mali. The Festival on the Niger takes place each February on the banks of the Niger River, one of the great rivers of Africa, in the ancient city of Segu. It is a celebration of West African culture in all its extraordinary variety, music, dance, storytelling, traditional crafts, oral history, and the extraordinary visual culture of the region, gathered in one place for four days of performances and celebrations of such richness and depth that it has attracted travelers from all over the world. The music at the Festival on the Niger is extraordinary. West Africa has one of the richest musical traditions on earth, traditions of rhythm and melody, that have traveled across the Atlantic and given birth to jazz and blues and rock and roll and almost every form of popular music that the world now listens to. Hearing those traditions performed in their original context, on the banks of the river that has carried the culture of this region for thousands of years, by musicians who have inherited them across generations, is an experience of extraordinary depth and beauty. The kora, a 21 stringed instrument with a sound unlike any other, the balafon, the yem drum, voices of extraordinary power and beauty, all of it performed under an open sky, above the Niger as the sun goes down. Let's travel to South America, to a celebration that is arguably the most visually spectacular festival in the world, Carnival in Brazil. Brazilian Carnival is extraordinary on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend before you experience it. It is a celebration of extraordinary creativity and artistry, and at its heart is the samba, the music and dance, that is central to Brazilian identity, developed over centuries in the communities of Rio de Janeiro and now performed at a level of extraordinary skill and beauty, that takes an entire year to prepare. The samba schools, the community organizations that produce the carnival parades, spend 12 months designing, building, and rehearsing for the few hours of the parade itself. The floats are engineering marvels, some of them several stories high, carrying hundreds of performers in costumes of extraordinary detail and beauty. The costumes themselves, feathers and sequins and elaborate headdresses, are works of art, that require hundreds of hours of handwork to create. And the music, the driving, joyful, irresistible rhythm of the samba, fills the samba drum and spills out into the streets of the city in a wave of sound and movement, that is unlike anything else on earth. But Brazilian Carnival is not only the formal parade, it is the entire city, for four days, transformed into a place of music and movement and celebration, in the streets, in the neighborhoods, in every plaza and park and open space. The blocos, informal street celebrations with their own music and their own traditions, take over the neighborhoods of Rio and create a city-wide festival of such extraordinary energy and joy that everyone, who experiences it describes it as one of the most alive they have ever felt. From South America, let's travel to Southeast Asia, to a festival that takes place on the water, and that offers one of the most visually extraordinary spectacles in the travel world. Yiping, the Lantern Festival of Northern Thailand. Yiping takes place each November in Chiang Mai, and the surrounding region of Northern Thailand, and it is one of those events that is genuinely impossible to describe in words, though people try constantly. The festival involves the release of thousands of paper lanterns, Kom Loy, into the night sky. Each lantern is a simple construction of tissue paper and bamboo, with a small fuel cell at the bottom that heats the air inside, and causes the lantern to rise. And when thousands of these lanterns are released simultaneously, rising slowly and silently into the dark sky above Chiang Mai, each one a small warm light ascending into the darkness, the effect is one of the most beautiful things, that human beings have ever created. The lanterns carry with them, in Thai Buddhist tradition, the troubles and the worries of the year, released into the sky to be carried away, and watching them rise, seeing them go from a handful to a dozen to hundreds, to thousands, until the entire sky above the city is filled with drifting points of warm light, like a galaxy of stars, that has descended to earth and is now slowly, gently, returning to the heavens, is an experience that changes people. Travelers who have been to Yiping describe it in terms, that are almost identical, quiet al, a feeling of peace, a sense that the world is, in this moment, exactly as it should be. Now let's travel to one of the oldest and most mysterious festivals in the western world. The Carnival of Venice, in Italy. The Carnival of Venice is one of the oldest festivals in Europe, with roots that go back to the 12th century, and it is extraordinary for a reason that is specific to its setting and its tradition. The masks. Venice has a tradition of mask making, the art of crafting elaborate, beautiful masks from paper match and decorated with extraordinary detail, that goes back centuries. And during Carnival, the streets and bridges and canals of Venice, fill with people wearing these masks, fantastical creations in gold and silver, in black and white, in the traditional forms of the commedia d'art, transforming the already extraordinary city into something, that feels genuinely like a dream. There is something deeply interesting about a festival built around masks. A mask transforms the person who wears it, not by hiding them, exactly, but by allowing them to step outside their ordinary identity, and become something else, something more theatrical, something that belongs to a different story. Walking through Venice during Carnival, crossing a bridge and encountering a figure in an extraordinary golden mask, and a cloak of deep blue velvet, perfectly still, perfectly composed, is one of those travel experiences, that is simply unlike anything else. The city of Venice is already one of the most beautiful places on earth. During Carnival, becomes something beyond beautiful, it becomes genuinely magical. And finally, let's travel to Ethiopia, to one of the most extraordinary religious festivals in the world, Timkat, the Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of Epiphany. Timkat takes place each January, 19 days after the Ethiopian Christmas, and it is the most important festival, in the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian calendar. The celebration commemorates the baptism of Jesus, in the Jordan River, and it is observed with a ceremony, and a visual spectacle of such extraordinary beauty, that it has been designated by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The night before Timkat, the Tabats, sacred replicas of the Ark of the Covenant, kept in every Ethiopian Orthodox Church, are wrapped in precious cloth and carried in procession to a nearby body of water, escorted by priests in extraordinary ceremonial robes of white and gold, by deacons carrying ceremonial umbrellas of brilliant color, and by the sound of traditional instruments, the sistrum, the drums, the chanting of the liturgy, that fills the night air with the sound of extraordinary power and beauty. At dawn, the water is blessed, and the faithful gather around it, in their white ceremonial clothing, the priests chanting, the deacons dancing, the air filled with incense and music, the visual quality of Timkat, the white of the clothing against the colors of the ceremonial umbrellas, the gold of the priestly robes, the procession moving through ancient streets, is extraordinary. It is a festival that has been celebrated in essentially the same form for centuries, unbroken connection to a tradition of faith and community that is among the oldest in the world. These festivals, Holi in India, Hanami in Japan, the festival on the Niger in Mali, Carnival in Brazil, Yipeng in Thailand, the Carnival of Venice in Italy, and Timkat in Ethiopia, are seven of the most extraordinary cultural celebrations in the world. Each one is completely different. Each one has its own history, its own meaning, its own particular quality of beauty and community, and each one offers the traveler something that ordinary travel, the museums, the monuments, the famous views, cannot offer. The experience of being present at a moment when a culture expresses its deepest values and its greatest joy, and of being welcomed, as a visitor, into that expression. Travel at its best is not about seeing places, it is about being present at moments, and the world's great festivals are some of the most extraordinary moments available to any traveler willing to seek them out.