Boston, USA: Zombie March

For the third straight year, Bostonians dressed as zombies marched from Boston to Cambridge’s Harvard Square in what organizers call a non-political, no-agenda good time.

Dublin, Georgia: The Summer Redneck Games

L-bow, the official mascot of the Summer Redneck Games, poses next to the mud pit with the festival’s ceremonial torch. Started in 1996 as a spoof of the summer Olympics held in Atlanta, the Games feature bobbing for pigs feet, hub cap hurling and the Redneck mud pit belly-flop contest.

Bedford Square Gardens, England: The Chap & Hendrick’s Olympics

A series of tongue-in-cheek competitions for traditional gentlemen who are against the vulgarity of modern culture, this festival includes events such as mixing dry martinis, the three-trousered limbo and a pipe relay.

Reading, England: Festival of Falconry

Bird-of-prey handlers from Turkmenistan hold falcons at the first Festival of Falconry. Bird keepers from all over the world attended the event to highlight the popularity and importance of the sport worldwide.

Sabucedo, Spain: Rapa Das Bestas

Since the Bronze Age, Galicians have been taming wild horses. On the first weekend of the month of July, hundreds of wild horses are rounded up by expert stockbreeders, known as agarradores, then trimmed and groomed.

Brockworth, England: Cheese Rolling Festival

In a dangerous tradition dating back to Roman times, competitors from all over the world run up a hill and then chase a 7 kg round cheese back down. The first who gets to it, keeps it.

Lopburi province, Thailand: The Monkey Buffet

Every year, all of the province’s approximately 600 monkeys are invited to eat fruits and vegetables during an annual feast held in honor of Rama, a hero of the Ramayana, who, it is said, rewarded his friend and ally, Hanuman the Monkey King, with the fiefdom of what is now Lopburi.

Novgorod, Russia: Maslenitsa

In Orthodox countries, the week before Lent is marked with a series of celebrations, including a free-for-all boxing match in which there are no rules. In centuries past, the fight ended only when the participates were covered with blood and bereft of clothes.

Bobr, Belarus: Ivana Kupala Night

On the night of this pagan festival, celebrated on July 7, the Gregorian summer solstice, young women don wreathes and celebrants jump through fire and swim naked. The rites are connected to ancient beliefs about fertility and autopurification.

Nobsa, Colombia: International Poncho Day

Designed to promote the work of local artisans who weave traditional wool ponchos, the parade and festival are a relatively new celebration.

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Every February, on what is somehow arranged to be the coldest day of the year, this Shinto festival, called "Hadaka Matsuri," causes the local men to drink large amounts of sake to purify their bodies and please the Gods. Once they have stripped off their clothing and adhered their fundoshi loin cloth, they keep warm by jumping up and down and chanting "Washoi!" which means, according to the drunk man who was standing next to me, "Wondafuru!"

At any rate, it definitely means something encouraging and serves as a method of keeping warm since the men chant Washoi! non-stop for hours at a time. Now I know why the Japanese don't have central heating in their homes. The secret to keeping warm is just to drink sake, and jump up and down naked while saying, "Wondafuru!" How easy!

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Up Helly Aa is a lot more than a sub-arctic bonfire and booze-up. It's a superb spectacle, a celebration of Shetland history, and a triumphant demonstration of the islanders' skills and spirit. This northern Mardi Gras lasts just one day (and night). But it takes several thousand people 364 days to organise. Much of the preparation is in strictest secrecy. The biggest secret of all is what the head of the festival, the 'Guizer Jarl', will wear and which character from the Norse Sagas he'll represent.

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It's a little difficult to narrow down Spain's list of weird and wacky festivals to fit on this page - so many of them would be considered bizarre to anyone born outside of Spain! People being chased by a herd of angry bulls and throwing tomatoes at each other are just some of Spain's most famous rituals in Spain that are carried out in the name of 'tradition', but there's plenty more bizarre festivals if you scratch beneath the surface.

Sometimes Spain can be a very surreal place. It is a country where you might hear Christmas carols in August (as part of the New Year's Eve in August celebrations), the fountains are filled with wine (in Cadiar in February and October and in Toro, Castilla y Leon in August) and farmers march their sheep through the center of Madrid just because they can. It is a country where some of the world's most traditional festivals take on a peculiar twist - with scatalogical Christmas traditions in Catalonia and Salamanca's bizarre Easter Monday tradition of welcoming back the city's 'ladies of the night' after their expulsion for Lent (in their Lunes de Aguas festival).

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Name: La Tomatina
Location: Bunol, Valencia, Spain
When's the party? The last Sunday in August

The set-up: Lorries arrive loaded with 125,000 kilos of distinctly unripe-smelling tomatoes. Local shopkeepers barricade their shop fronts. By 11am the streets are rammed with 20,000 locals and tourists intent on becoming part of the world's biggest human bolognaise.

Festival fact: The tradition dates back to 1945, when a couple of irate locals assumed control of two fruit stalls and started hurling fresh produce at each other.

Top tip: At 1pm, when a siren announces the end of festivities, get out of the way, as tons of water from the Roman aqueduct are pumped into the streets. Never mind, though - it's time to start eating and drinking!

 

Name: Songkran Festival
Location: Chiang Mai, Thailand
When's the party? 13-15 April (Buddhist New Year)

The set-up: After performing bathing rites on images of the Buddha, Chiang Mai locals get busy 'cleansing' each other with water pistols. As well as the beauty pageants, parades and dancing in the streets, everyone gets a good soaking.

Festival fact: The festival promotes the cleansing and renewal of the community, and dates back to ancient farming traditions over a thousand years old.

Top tip: Chiang Mai's old town is surrounded by a moat-like canal, ideal for refilling your water pistol for new raids.

 

Name: San Fermin / The Running of the Bulls
Location: Pamplona, Spain
When's the party? 7-14 July

The set-up: Think you can outrun a bull over 830 metres? Young lunatics with red cravats are released into a labyrinth of medieval streets with a pack of horny bulls, each weighing in at around 120 stone. Jackass-style absolute bonkersness or Hemingway-esque poetic machismo? You decide.

Festival fact: The festival first achieved international fame thanks to grizzly-bearded Hispanophile Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.

Top tip: Make no attempt to outrun the bulls - allow them to catch up, before sneaking out of a gap in the fence for a fried-squid pincho and beer on the sideline.

 

Name: The Orange Festival
Location: Ivrea, in the beautiful Italian alpine region of Piemonte, Italy
When's the party? 18-21 February

The set-up: 10,000 locals in bright costumes (the masses) line up to pelt oranges at men in chariots (the aristocracy). The battle spreads to encompass the whole town.

Festival fact: It celebrates the beheading of Count Ranieri, a 12th century nobleman who liked to kidnap local virgin belles and deflower them before their wedding days. Dressed in white and distributing sweeties throughout the crowds is Violetta, who - legend proclaims - lopped the count's head off.

Top tip: Scarli (big poles) are erected in each piazza and burned, lighting up the night sky. This is the signal to get stuck into a plate of polenta e merluzza, fish and cornmeal, like the locals do.

 

Name: The Wife-Carrying Championships
Location: Sonkajärvi, Finland
When's the party? 4 July

The set-up: The challenge is to carry your beloved 253 metres over sand, grass and asphalt, and comes complete with a couple of water obstacles to make it cosy. You can drop her as many times as you like - it's only a 15-second penalty. Ouch. Only joking, darling.

Festival fact: Victory is rewarded with a barrel of beer equal to your partner's body weight. Defeat is rewarded with compulsory entry in the beer-barrel-rolling and strong-man competitions.

Top tip: Forgot your wife? You can borrow one in Sonkajärvi - as long as she's over 17. The Wife-Carrying Championships authorities don't stipulate that your partner has to be a lawful spouse. In fact, the contest was originally inspired by 19th century brigands, who would carry off village wives and loot.