Eight Festivals Worth Planning a Journey Around

Most of the time, a festival is a happy accident of timing — you arrive in a town and discover the square has been taken over by music. But a handful of festivals are extraordinary enough to plan a journey around: to shift a departure date, book a year ahead and accept the crowds because the event itself is unrepeatable.

Here are eight, drawn from across our journeys, that reward that kind of planning. They span solstice rites, religious pageants, harvest celebrations and one festival of pure colour. For each we give the essentials — when, where, and what makes it worth the effort of arriving on exactly the right day.

Inti Raymi — Cusco, Peru, 24 June

The Festival of the Sun is the great set-piece of the Andean year: a revived Inca solstice ceremony staged across Cusco and culminating in a costumed pageant on the terraces of Sacsayhuamán. It falls in the dry, luminous Andean winter, and the whole city is festive for days around it.

On Andes to Antarctica, a late-June Cusco chapter can be built around Inti Raymi — but the city books out months ahead, and the Sacsayhuamán seating must be secured early. Plan it as the anchor of your dates, not an afterthought.

Gion Matsuri — Kyoto, Japan, July

Gion Matsuri is one of Japan's most famous festivals, held throughout July and dating back over a thousand years to a ritual to ward off plague. Its centrepieces are the two grand processions of yamaboko — towering wooden floats, some weighing many tonnes, hung with tapestries and hauled through the streets on solid wooden wheels.

The evenings before each procession, the yoiyama nights, are the festival's most atmospheric: the floats are lit by lanterns, and the old merchant houses of central Kyoto open their rooms to display heirloom screens. On The Long Way East, a July passage through Kyoto can be timed to the festival, though Kyoto in July is hot and humid.

Semana Santa — Seville, Spain, Holy Week

Holy Week in Seville is among the most intense religious festivals in Europe. Through the week before Easter, the city's brotherhoods carry elaborate floats — pasos bearing sculptures of Christ and the Virgin — in long, candlelit processions from their parish churches to the cathedral and back, some lasting through the night.

It is solemn rather than carnival, and deeply moving even to non-religious visitors: the slow sway of a paso under the weight of its bearers, the sudden silence, the occasional saeta sung from a balcony. Seville is a natural opening chapter on a Spain-and-the-world journey, and a Holy Week start sets a powerful tone — though the city is at its fullest.

Día de los Muertos — Mexico, late October to 2 November

The Day of the Dead is a festival of welcome, not grief: an occasion on which families build ofrendas — altars laid with marigolds, candles, photographs, sugar skulls and the favourite foods of the deceased — to greet the souls of the dead, who are believed to return. It is inscribed on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The celebration is strongest in central and southern Mexico, in cities such as Oaxaca and around Lake Pátzcuaro, where cemeteries fill with candlelight on the night of 1 November. It is a family observance above all; visitors are often welcome but should move quietly and ask before entering cemeteries or photographing altars.

Holi — across India, February or March

Holi is the festival of colour: a spring celebration on which people across India and beyond throw clouds of coloured powder and douse one another with water, marking the triumph of good over evil and the arrival of spring. For a day, ordinary social distance dissolves into a riot of pink, green and yellow.

Holi is joyful and chaotic, and a traveller joining in should expect to be thoroughly coloured and dressed accordingly — old clothes, a camera you can protect, and a sense of humour. The date is set by the lunar calendar and falls on the full moon of the month of Phalguna.

Naadam — Mongolia, July

Naadam is Mongolia's national festival, held in mid-July and built around the 'three manly games' — wrestling, horse racing and archery — with roots reaching back to the gatherings of the steppe armies. It is recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The largest Naadam fills the national stadium in Ulaanbaatar, but the smaller festivals out on the steppe are more intimate and arguably more memorable: long-distance horse races ridden by child jockeys across open grassland, wrestlers in their distinctive jackets, and a whole community gathered. For journeys crossing Central Asia and Mongolia, a July passage can be timed to coincide.

Timkat — Ethiopia, 19 January

Timkat is the Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of Epiphany, commemorating the baptism of Christ, and it is one of the most visually striking religious festivals anywhere. Priests carry the tabot — a replica of the Ark of the Covenant — from each church under ceremonial umbrellas, in procession to a body of water, where the congregation keeps vigil through the night and the water is blessed at dawn.

Timkat is spectacular in the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela and in Gondar, where crowds gather at a historic bathing pool. On a journey through the Ethiopian highlands, a mid-January arrival places you within one of the country's holiest and most colourful days.

Carnaval de Oruro — Bolivia, February or March

The Carnival of Oruro, in the Bolivian highlands, is a UNESCO-recognised festival in which more than forty thousand dancers and musicians perform a vast procession lasting some twenty hours, winding through the mining town to a sanctuary of the Virgin. Its signature is the diablada, the dance of the devils, with masks of astonishing craftsmanship.

Oruro fuses Catholic devotion with Andean belief — including reverence for the figure of the Tío, the spirit of the mines — and it is one of the great folk festivals of South America. It falls in the rainy season, so come prepared for weather, and book very early; the town is small and demand is enormous.