Festivals Worth Travelling For

Festivals should be about more than overpriced flower crowns and that one guy who’s always trying to start a drum circle at Coachella. If you’re going to travel halfway across the world, deal with jet lag, and risk eating something questionable at an airport kiosk, it ought to be for something a bit more memorable. Something that doesn’t involve VIP wristbands and silent discos. There’s a whole world out there throwing wild, wonderful, and occasionally slightly messy parties that actually mean something. Proper cultural mayhem with heart, history, and sometimes an alarming amount of fruit. Not just an excuse for overpriced cider and trendy sunburns—real stories, real traditions, and a strong chance of being coated in something unidentifiable.

These festivals are where chaos and heritage hold hands, twirl in circles, and shout at the moon. They’re the kind of experiences that stain your clothes and lodge in your memory far longer than any Insta post ever could.

Take Holi, for instance. Held across India every spring, it’s the one day where absolutely everyone becomes a walking canvas. Imagine thousands of people pelting each other with powdered colours in the streets, like a real-life colour fight where no one minds getting a bit of blue in their ears. Kids, grannies, strangers, all going wild in a neon cloud of joy. You start the day in white, fresh and hopeful, and end it looking like a tie-dyed fever dream. The air smells like sugar and spice, the music is loud and slightly off-beat, and the energy is euphoric. And it’s not just a free-for-all.

Holi celebrates the triumph of good over evil, spring over winter, and sheer chaos over cleanliness. There’s something liberating about surrendering to the madness. No schedule. No rules. Just music, dancing, sweets, and colour everywhere—on your skin, in your hair, under your fingernails for a suspiciously long time afterward. Strangers smile at each other with pink teeth and rainbow-streaked cheeks. You’ll forget your phone, your inbox, your carefully curated life. You might even make friends mid-powder attack—nothing bonds people like mutual colour assault. Pack something you never want to see again, and jump in like you mean it. And if you’re lucky, someone will hand you a bhang lassi and you’ll discover what psychedelic springtime truly feels like.

If you prefer your festivals with a touch of the macabre and a lot of marigolds, then get yourself to Mexico for the Day of the Dead. This is not Halloween, and it’s definitely not spooky. It’s a heartwarmingly festive, slightly surreal, all-night celebration of those who’ve passed on. Families build altars with photos, candles, and offerings of pan de muerto (yes, dead bread, but trust me—it’s delicious). Cemeteries become places of light and music, not mourning. Entire towns are draped in orange and purple, with skeletons smiling from every corner. You’ll see papier-mâché skulls in shop windows, kids in calavera face paint, and grown-ups in full Catrina regalia gliding through candlelit streets.

People paint their faces like elegant skulls and parade through the streets with music, flowers, and a distinct sense that death might not be the end, just another reason to party. Kids nibble sugar skulls, grandparents sip mezcal, and you, the outsider, might just find yourself getting a little emotional over someone else’s family shrine. It’s poignant and powerful, a celebration with soul. There’s laughter and food and stories shared late into the night. Families picnic on graves, mariachi bands play songs both joyful and sad, and there’s this collective sense that memory is a living thing.

And let’s be honest—who doesn’t want to dance with ghosts under a sky full of fireworks? Especially when those ghosts have better fashion sense than you. Day of the Dead invites you to rethink mortality, not as a cliff edge but as a doorway into tradition, family, and festivity. You don’t leave with a sugar high—you leave with a heart full of something hard to name.

Now, if you think you’ve got what it takes to be pelted with produce, you need to be in Buñol, Spain, for La Tomatina. Once a year, thousands descend on this tiny town for what can only be described as the world’s largest food fight. It starts with someone climbing a greased-up pole to reach a ham (don’t ask), and ends with the streets running red with tomato juice. In between, chaos reigns. Lorry-loads of tomatoes are dumped in the streets, and within minutes, it’s every person for themselves. There’s no winning. There’s no strategy. There’s just splatter. It’s slippery, it’s squishy, and it’s slightly bonkers. Shoes get lost. Sunglasses vanish. Dignity is optional. You’ll be picking tomato seeds out of your eyebrows for a week.

But it’s also a joyous, anarchic, utterly pointless event that somehow feels like a very good idea when you’re there. Locals hose down walls and tourists alike, and somehow, everyone ends up laughing. There’s something cleansing about it in a bizarre way—a great red reset button. Bring goggles. Trust me on that one. And maybe a backup outfit unless you enjoy smelling like pasta sauce for the rest of the day. Or embrace it. Tomato chic could be a thing. And don’t worry about the waste—the tomatoes used are overripe and destined for compost anyway. This isn’t food wastage, it’s food-based performance art. Sort of.

Of course, these are just a few highlights. The world is bursting at the seams with festivals that dance to their own beat—some sacred, some ridiculous, all fascinating. In Thailand, there’s a lantern festival that turns the night sky into a galaxy of floating stars. Think Disney-level romance but sticky with humidity and the occasional rogue fire hazard. In Japan, people run around carrying giant phallic symbols to bless fertility (again, don’t ask, just appreciate the confidence). In Scotland, they literally roll burning barrels through the streets—because nothing says celebration like fire and momentum. In Bolivia, there’s the Tinku festival where people willingly get into fistfights to honour the gods—blood offerings included. In Italy, there’s a historic jousting match re-enacted in full medieval garb, complete with serious moustaches.

In Iceland, they have a winter festival where everyone wears wool, eats shark, and insists they’re having a great time. There’s cheese rolling in England, mud festivals in South Korea, and entire cities in Brazil that stop functioning because everyone is too busy samba-ing through the streets. In Finland, you can race your wife through an obstacle course. In India again, there’s a festival where people walk on fire to prove their devotion. Humanity is nothing if not creative when it comes to having a blast.

There is no end to the ways humans celebrate being alive, remembering the past, or just letting off steam in the most theatrical way possible. Whether it involves flowers, flames, or fermented fish, festivals remind us that the world is weird, wonderful, and wired for joy. They give us permission to be absurd, heartfelt, dramatic, and entirely ourselves in the company of others doing exactly the same.

These festivals aren’t about hashtags or VIP lounges. They’re messy, meaningful, rooted in history, and often completely unhinged in the best way possible. They remind us that culture isn’t always polite or pristine. Sometimes it’s loud, chaotic, colourful—and smells vaguely of fruit. Sometimes it gets under your skin, literally and metaphorically. Sometimes it stains your clothes, your soul, and your travel insurance claim. But you come home with stories you actually want to tell. Stories that make you laugh mid-sentence and say, “You had to be there.” And really, isn’t that what makes it worth travelling for?