Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling Festival :

The origins of this ‘traditional’ event are somewhat murky but it has been held for at least 200 years at Cooper’s Hill near Gloucester in the Cotswolds. Participants chase a wheel of locally made Double Gloucester Cheese down the hill and the first person over the finish line wins the cheese! This is a notoriously dangerous event with the cheese reaching up to speeds of 70mph, which is fast enough to knock over and injure spectators.

The hill itself is steep and most participants find themselves rolling down the hill rather than running, which makes the event rather entertaining for spectators. Fans of this event are true diehards though. A group of paramedics and volunteers and a couple of ambulances are stationed at the bottom of the hill ready to carry the injured away to the hospital.

^{Photo Credits : Unknown}

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Camel Hair Art at Bikaner Camel Festival :

Every January, thousands of visitors go to Bikaner, India to see the famous Camel festival. It begins with the procession of beautifully decorated camels, a competition for best decorated camel, fur cutting design, camel milking and the best camel hair cut. Next day, the fleetest camels of the region take part in the camel races. 

According to photographer Osakabe Yasuo, preparing camel’s hair for the competition may take up to three years to create. First, the hair needs to be grown for two years. Then the hair is trimmed into intricate patterns and dyed for the dramatic effect you see below.

  In the first two years, camel hair just grows, it is only slightly shortened in a special way. In the third year, on the eve of festivals, camel hair cut off to form complex patterns of great beauty, and painted in a special way.

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Life up in a Korowai tree house - West Papua, Indonesia :

The korowai, also called the Kolufo, are a people of southeastern Papua (i.e., the southeastern part of the western part of New Guinea. They number about 3,000. Until 1970, they were unaware of the existence of any people besides themselves. The majority of the Korowai clans live in tree houses on their isolated territory.

 The distinctive high stilt architecture of the Korowai houses, well above flood-water levels, is a form of defensive fortification- to disrupt rival clans from capturing people (especially women and children) for slavery or cannibalism. The height and girth of the common ironwood stilts also serves to protect the house from arson attacks in which huts are set alight and the inhabitants smoked out.

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Dressing the Dead - Ma 'Nene' :

 

In Toraja, South Sulawesi, the dead periodically rise and get a change of clothes before being returned to their graves. During the Ma’nene ritual, held every few years, families clean the graves and change the clothes of preserved ancestral remains in a show of respect and love. The Ma’nene ritual underlines the local belief that deceased relatives remain very much a part of the community.

Relatives open the casket of their grand mother Martha Bu'tu that was died 40 years ago during the Ma'nene' rite in Sesean mountain, Rinding Allo, North Toraja, South Sulawesi. The Ma'nene rite is a tradition to change the clothes of their relatives that is already death to show love from their living family. 

 

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