Festivals are a living, dancing museum of cultures and traditions in an increasingly globalized world. There is no better place for travellers to understand a country than an event where it proudly celebrates its individuality, whether through music, camel races or monumental food fights.
The top festivities for August are listed below.
Crop Over
Location: National Stadium, Bridgetown, Barbados
Dates: first week in August
During Crop Over, Barbados, that jolly British part of the Caribbean, shows nothing resembling a stiff upper lip, and dissolves into three months of rum-soaked fun. The tradition began in 1780, when plantation workers celebrated the end of the cane harvest. The festival declined with the sugar industry, but was revived in 1974, for tourists as much as locals.
Þjóðhátíð (The People’s Feast)
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‘Heimaey ‘by quinet. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
Location: Heimaey, Westmann Islands, Iceland
Dates: Verslunarmannahelgi (first weekend in August)
All over Iceland, bonfires are lit and vodka is shared to celebrate the ratification of the country’s constitution in 1874, but Heimaey hosts the mother of all parties. Some 10,000 people make like the local puffins and flock to the only inhabited Westmann island for a music festival on the edge of the world.
Esala Perahera (Tooth Festival)
Location: Dalada Maligawa, Raja Vidiya, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Dates: ten days ending on the full moon in August
Legend has it that when Buddha was cremated in the 5th century BC, one of his followers took a tooth from the pyre. The holy canine was later smuggled to Sri Lanka, in the hair of an Orissan princess disguised as a Brahmin priest. King Megavanna was so happy to have the religious relic on his island that he had it paraded through the city for his subjects to marvel at. Read more.
Qi Xi (Seven Sisters Festival)
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‘
Nathan road, Kowloon’ by JoopDorresteijn. Creative Commons Attribution
Location: Lovers’ Rock, Bowen Rd, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, China
Date: seventh day of the seventh lunar month
Qi Xi is the Chinese equivalent of Valentine’s Night. In a tradition that pre-dates Christ (not to mention speed dating), single girls carry out tasks to impress potential lovers. Also called Night of the Skills, the event sees girls showing off their talents at domestic duties such as embroidery and melon carving. They throw a sewing needle into a bowl of water and, if it floats, that indicates the girl is an accomplished knitter.
Edinburgh International Festival
Image of dancers on the Royal Mile as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Image by Edinburgh’s Festivals)
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Dates: last three weeks in August
There could be no better location for the world’s largest arts festival than the Scottish capital, where a castle looks down from its volcanic perch at Georgian townhouses and Gothic closes. The official reason for the three weeks of frenzy, which turn Edinburgh into a citywide performance artwork, is the highbrow festival of classical music, opera, theatre and dance. Read more.
La Pourcailhade (Pig Festival)
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‘
France, Hautes-Pyrénées, Catchet’ by chakchouka. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: Old Market, Trie Sur Baïse, Hautes-Pyrénées, France
Date: second Sunday in August
The smell of roast pork fills the air at this porcine celebration, which gives a boost to the declining pig-farming industry. In fact, it’s universally enjoyed, because it gives everyone an excuse to do an impression of a porker at the swill trough.
Chung Yuan (Hungry Ghost Festival)
Location: China
Date: fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month
For the Chinese, this is ‘Ghost Month’, a time when they are scared to leave their houses after dark. They believe the doors to the afterworld are thrown open and ghosts roam the land of the living, settling old scores or just scaring people.
Bumba Meu Boi
‘Bumba-Meu-Boi’ by michael_swan. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil
Dates: late June to the second week of August
The second week in August is your last chance to catch this wild, folkloric festival. Derived from African, Indian and Portuguese influences that mingled in colonial times, the event revolves around the story of the ox’s death and resurrection. Accompanied by much heckling, a stream of street performers, many dressed as oxen or mythological creatures, tell the tale through song, dance, theatre and capoeira.
Il Palio
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‘Piazza del Campo’ by razvan.orendovici. Creative Commons Attribution
Location: Il Campo, Siena, Tuscany, Italy
Dates: 2 July and 16 August
The Italians’ factional tendencies can be seen in all their swaggering glory at Il Palio, a bareback horse race that lasts for about a minute and a half. During the short dash around central piazza Il Campo, which is covered in packed dirt for the occasion, jockeys are allowed to do anything to their opponents other than tug their reins. The winning steed is often riderless.
Elvis Week
Location: Elvis Presley Blvd, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Dates: one week around 16 August
On the anniversary of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s death, Elvis impersonators converge on Memphis, Tennessee, where Presley ate his last peanut butter n’ jelly sandwich in 1977.
World Bog Snorkelling
Location: Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, Wales
Date: August Bank Holiday weekend
Llanwrtyd Wells has supplemented the tourist magic of being Britain’s smallest town with a series of bonkers events, the daftest of which is bog snorkelling.
Mezinárodní Dudácký Festivalu (International Bagpipe Festival)
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‘Rožmberk ‘by dorena-wm. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: Strakonice, Písecko, South Bohemia, Czech Republic
Dates: late August, held every two years
As well as Turkish fez hats, handguns and CZ Motorcyles, the Czech town of Strakonice is known for its dudy (bagpipes). Oh, General Patton also based himself here when the US army liberated parts of Bohemia in 1945. But more recently, the town has held a four-day festival devoted to the many forms of bagpipe blowing. You can get a sense of this variety at the stop-start opening procession, in which the enthusiastic players regularly pause for a toot, and take hours to cover the 1km to the castle.
Festival de Tango (Tango Festival)
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‘Con pasión – tango’ by Ana_Cotta. Creative Commons Attribution
Location: Venues around Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dates: second half of August
Buenos Aires and tango are about as inseparable as, well, a pair of tango dancers. In celebration of its sultry and mysterious dance, the Argentine capital stages this annual festival, with events spread out across the city.
Famadihana (Turning of the Bones)
Location: Hauts plateaux (highlands), Madagascar
Dates: throughout winter (June to September)
Traditional Malagasay culture is rooted in respect for its ancestors, as the Merina people’s Famadihana exhumation ceremony bears testament to. The living family members gather at the clan’s tomb, where stone and mud are prised open and straw-wrapped ancestors passed out above bobbing, dancing heads.
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’ (the fifth largest in desolate Nevada), where inhibitions are left at the gates and freakery courses along the dusty streets. Read more.
La Tomatina (Tomato-throwing Festival)
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‘La Tomatina: In Uniform’ by dahon. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: Plaza del Pueblo, Buñol, Valencia, Spain
Date: last Wednesday in August
Getting pelted with tomatoes may sound like a punishment reserved for medieval rogues in the stocks, but it’s all in the name of fun at La Tomatina. For one morning a year, the small town of Buñol in eastern Spain dissolves into the world’s greatest tomato fight.
Notting Hill Carnival
‘
A dancer at Notting Hill Carnival 2009‘ by extrageographic. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
Location: Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill, London, England
Dates: last Sunday and Monday in August
The British capital’s top summer knees-up, a celebration of the local Caribbean community, has enlivened this part of town since the 1950s. During the end-of-August bank holiday, the neighbourhood featured in the Hugh Grant film Notting Hill explodes with reggae sound systems and Rastafarians smoking what one of Grant’s characters might call ‘wacky baccy’.
Source: lonelyplanet
Festivals are a living, dancing museum of cultures and traditions in an increasingly globalized world. There is no better place for travellers to understand a country than an event where it proudly celebrates its individuality, whether through music, camel races or monumental food fights.
The top festivities for August are listed below.
Crop Over
Location: National Stadium, Bridgetown, Barbados
Dates: first week in August
During Crop Over, Barbados, that jolly British part of the Caribbean, shows nothing resembling a stiff upper lip, and dissolves into three months of rum-soaked fun. The tradition began in 1780, when plantation workers celebrated the end of the cane harvest. The festival declined with the sugar industry, but was revived in 1974, for tourists as much as locals.
Þjóðhátíð (The People’s Feast)
Pin this image‘Heimaey ‘by quinet. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
Location: Heimaey, Westmann Islands, Iceland
Dates: Verslunarmannahelgi (first weekend in August)
All over Iceland, bonfires are lit and vodka is shared to celebrate the ratification of the country’s constitution in 1874, but Heimaey hosts the mother of all parties. Some 10,000 people make like the local puffins and flock to the only inhabited Westmann island for a music festival on the edge of the world.
Esala Perahera (Tooth Festival)
Location: Dalada Maligawa, Raja Vidiya, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Dates: ten days ending on the full moon in August
Legend has it that when Buddha was cremated in the 5th century BC, one of his followers took a tooth from the pyre. The holy canine was later smuggled to Sri Lanka, in the hair of an Orissan princess disguised as a Brahmin priest. King Megavanna was so happy to have the religious relic on his island that he had it paraded through the city for his subjects to marvel at. Read more.
Qi Xi (Seven Sisters Festival)
Pin this image‘
Nathan road, Kowloon’ by JoopDorresteijn. Creative Commons Attribution
Location: Lovers’ Rock, Bowen Rd, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, China
Date: seventh day of the seventh lunar month
Qi Xi is the Chinese equivalent of Valentine’s Night. In a tradition that pre-dates Christ (not to mention speed dating), single girls carry out tasks to impress potential lovers. Also called Night of the Skills, the event sees girls showing off their talents at domestic duties such as embroidery and melon carving. They throw a sewing needle into a bowl of water and, if it floats, that indicates the girl is an accomplished knitter.
Edinburgh International Festival
Image of dancers on the Royal Mile as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Image by Edinburgh’s Festivals)
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Dates: last three weeks in August
There could be no better location for the world’s largest arts festival than the Scottish capital, where a castle looks down from its volcanic perch at Georgian townhouses and Gothic closes. The official reason for the three weeks of frenzy, which turn Edinburgh into a citywide performance artwork, is the highbrow festival of classical music, opera, theatre and dance. Read more.
La Pourcailhade (Pig Festival)
Pin this image‘
France, Hautes-Pyrénées, Catchet’ by chakchouka. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: Old Market, Trie Sur Baïse, Hautes-Pyrénées, France
Date: second Sunday in August
The smell of roast pork fills the air at this porcine celebration, which gives a boost to the declining pig-farming industry. In fact, it’s universally enjoyed, because it gives everyone an excuse to do an impression of a porker at the swill trough.
Chung Yuan (Hungry Ghost Festival)
Location: China
Date: fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month
For the Chinese, this is ‘Ghost Month’, a time when they are scared to leave their houses after dark. They believe the doors to the afterworld are thrown open and ghosts roam the land of the living, settling old scores or just scaring people.
Bumba Meu Boi
‘Bumba-Meu-Boi’ by michael_swan. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil
Dates: late June to the second week of August
The second week in August is your last chance to catch this wild, folkloric festival. Derived from African, Indian and Portuguese influences that mingled in colonial times, the event revolves around the story of the ox’s death and resurrection. Accompanied by much heckling, a stream of street performers, many dressed as oxen or mythological creatures, tell the tale through song, dance, theatre and capoeira.
Il Palio
Pin this image
‘Piazza del Campo’ by razvan.orendovici. Creative Commons Attribution
Location: Il Campo, Siena, Tuscany, Italy
Dates: 2 July and 16 August
The Italians’ factional tendencies can be seen in all their swaggering glory at Il Palio, a bareback horse race that lasts for about a minute and a half. During the short dash around central piazza Il Campo, which is covered in packed dirt for the occasion, jockeys are allowed to do anything to their opponents other than tug their reins. The winning steed is often riderless.
Elvis Week
Location: Elvis Presley Blvd, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Dates: one week around 16 August
On the anniversary of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s death, Elvis impersonators converge on Memphis, Tennessee, where Presley ate his last peanut butter n’ jelly sandwich in 1977.
World Bog Snorkelling
Location: Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, Wales
Date: August Bank Holiday weekend
Llanwrtyd Wells has supplemented the tourist magic of being Britain’s smallest town with a series of bonkers events, the daftest of which is bog snorkelling.
Mezinárodní Dudácký Festivalu (International Bagpipe Festival)
Pin this image‘Rožmberk ‘by dorena-wm. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: Strakonice, Písecko, South Bohemia, Czech Republic
Dates: late August, held every two years
As well as Turkish fez hats, handguns and CZ Motorcyles, the Czech town of Strakonice is known for its dudy (bagpipes). Oh, General Patton also based himself here when the US army liberated parts of Bohemia in 1945. But more recently, the town has held a four-day festival devoted to the many forms of bagpipe blowing. You can get a sense of this variety at the stop-start opening procession, in which the enthusiastic players regularly pause for a toot, and take hours to cover the 1km to the castle.
Festival de Tango (Tango Festival)
Pin this image
‘Con pasión – tango’ by Ana_Cotta. Creative Commons Attribution
Location: Venues around Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dates: second half of August
Buenos Aires and tango are about as inseparable as, well, a pair of tango dancers. In celebration of its sultry and mysterious dance, the Argentine capital stages this annual festival, with events spread out across the city.
Famadihana (Turning of the Bones)
Location: Hauts plateaux (highlands), Madagascar
Dates: throughout winter (June to September)
Traditional Malagasay culture is rooted in respect for its ancestors, as the Merina people’s Famadihana exhumation ceremony bears testament to. The living family members gather at the clan’s tomb, where stone and mud are prised open and straw-wrapped ancestors passed out above bobbing, dancing heads.
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’ (the fifth largest in desolate Nevada), where inhibitions are left at the gates and freakery courses along the dusty streets. Read more.
La Tomatina (Tomato-throwing Festival)
Pin this image‘La Tomatina: In Uniform’ by dahon. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Location: Plaza del Pueblo, Buñol, Valencia, Spain
Date: last Wednesday in August
Getting pelted with tomatoes may sound like a punishment reserved for medieval rogues in the stocks, but it’s all in the name of fun at La Tomatina. For one morning a year, the small town of Buñol in eastern Spain dissolves into the world’s greatest tomato fight.
Notting Hill Carnival
‘
A dancer at Notting Hill Carnival 2009‘ by extrageographic. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
Location: Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill, London, England
Dates: last Sunday and Monday in August
The British capital’s top summer knees-up, a celebration of the local Caribbean community, has enlivened this part of town since the 1950s. During the end-of-August bank holiday, the neighbourhood featured in the Hugh Grant film Notting Hill explodes with reggae sound systems and Rastafarians smoking what one of Grant’s characters might call ‘wacky baccy’.
Source: lonelyplanet
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