The most bizarre and unusual rituals around Asia you would never have heard of!
Hello Travel buddies! This is Doodle here 💓 ! Welcome to Doodle’s Travel Diary! ❤🌍→. So, here is something really exciting and fun that’s going to happen for a month now in this space! For the first time ever, Doodle’s Travel Diary presents to you, ‘ Around Asia in 30 days ‘, a 30-day blog series curated on 21 travel-friendly countries and a lot more about Asia! If you have not checked my last blog posts on other countries in Asia, please do give it a read, and feel free to drop a comment and share!
After virtually traveling to 21 travel-friendly countries of Asia, you must be thinking about what’s next in the remaining nine days! These 8 days are going to equally fun and exciting and I am sure all of these blog posts will definitely help you plan your next vacation to any of these countries.
Rituals and traditions have been an integral part of history. In fact, there have been so many incidents in history which took place because of the rituals and beliefs of the people in that frame of time and mind, both equally responsible for the existence of those rituals even today. Rituals and traditions have a strange relation with families all around the world, which later results in them being passed over to generations and generations under the name of ‘sheer respect’ to ancestors and their ancestors as well! We have associated ourselves with these things, willingly or unwillingly and hence there is a need for questioning as to how many of them actually make sense in today’s era. Asia is a diverse continent with countries of all shapes, sizes, and most importantly, culture! Here is a list of the weirdest and the most bizarre rituals around Asia, which are still followed to this day!
1. The fire walking festival:-
Firewalking festival is witnessed in some countries like India and Sri Lanka where walking on burning embers or stones is considered to demolish evil spirits and is used as a ritual for purification. Some tribes in Pakistan also use this as a justification system to prove the innocence of guilty. If the guilty walks over the embers or stones without any burns, they are considered to be innocent otherwise proven of guilt.
2. The sky Burial:-
Buddhists in Tibet and Nepal follow the ritual of Jhator or the Sky Burial. The dead bodies are taken to open fields at a very high altitude, to be left behind for scavengers. The tradition looks to provide resources to earth, even after death. Sky burials have been made illegal now but it can still be observed with the permission of the family.
3. Baby Tossing:-
Newborn babies are dropped from a 50 ft high temple in the southern Indian state of Karnataka India to “bring health and prosperity in their lives”. Couples who are blessed with a child after taking a vow at the Shri Santeshwar temple take part in this bizarre practice every year, in the first week of December.
4. Hokkai Heso Matsuri:-
Celebrated in July in Furano, Hokkaido, Japan, Hokkai Heso Matsuri or belly button festival is one you’d love to be a part of! The centre of one’s body is the belly button and Furano is the centre of Hokkaido.Dancers paint faces onto their chests and stomachs, using the belly button as the mouth of the character. They then proceed to belly dance their way down the streets!
5. Shogastsu Festival:-
The Shogastu Festival in Japan teaches people about the unpredictability of death and teaches them how to prepare for it. This includes lessons of psychological preparation and testing out of coffins.
6. The Korean Dol:-
A baby’s first birthday, or dol, is an extravagant affair in Korea, where in the past disease and starvation took so many lives that surviving one’s first year was a major milestone. The highlight of these events is a fortune telling ritual called the doljabi in which the child is placed in front of various objects such as books, paintbrushes and piggy banks. The child is then encouraged to pick up an object from the table. This object, it is believed, will foretell the child’s future.
7. Sticking the dough on the door:-
Some brides in Lebanon stick a piece of dough on the doors of their new houses. This is said to predict the success of the marriage. If the dough remains in place, they will have a long, happy life. If not, the marriage will is going up a slippery slope, so to speak.
8. Tooth Filing
In one of the biggest Hindu ceremonies in Balinese culture, both males and female are supposed to undergo one ritual before marriage — to get their teeth filed! Apparently, this ritual signifies the passage from puberty to adulthood, and supposedly, it also renders a person spiritually and physically!
The next 9 days are going to great fun curating and presenting each country and I will try my best to put up the best content every day.
9. Offering red Fanta to spirits:-
Thai culture is heavily shaped by Buddhist beliefs however this comes from an ancient Thai practice of appeasing spirits and ghosts, a kind of animism. Across Thailand, you will see small shrines or spirit houses and yes, people love to offer red Fanta.
The next 8 days are going to great fun curating and presenting each country and I will try my best to put up the best content every day.
Also, let me know in the comments section below if you enjoyed reading this blog! Your response does mean a lot!
Till then, stay home, please, all this can wait and stay happy! We are in this together! keep following Doodle and show her some love on her Instagram handle https://www.instagram.com/doodles_travel_diary/?hl=en and follow her on Medium as well: https://medium.com/@doodlestraveldiary for an exciting series of posts 😎😇.
Doodle Signing off😊
