7 of the World’s Most Dangerous Festivals

If you’re a thrill seeker, here are seven festivals and celebrations from around the world that will get your blood pumping.

Peru: Christmas Fighting Festival

Takanakuy festival, which takes place on December 25, people settle their disputes and grievances by challenging each other to fistfights. Fighters and spectators attend the festival wearing costumes local folklore.

Greece: Rouketopolemos (Rocket War)

Every year on Easter the Greek village of Vrontados engages in an unusual, dangerous custom. Two rival churches, Agios Markos and Panagia Erithiani, stage mock war, firing as many as 60,000 small rockets at each other’s bell towers. The light show in the night sky is spectacular, but some of the rockets inevitably veer off course, causing injuries, property damage, and occasionally death.

Spain: Baby-Jumping

The Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia has some interesting ideas about childcare. Since the 17th century, the village has been holding a yearly ceremony in which infants are laid out on mattresses in the street. Actors dressed as devils then leap over them. The ritual supposedly dispels the children’s original sin. The festival hasn’t had any mishaps yet, but nobody would blame you if you held your breath until the jumping part is over.

England: Cheese-Rolling

Two-day festival has been held in Gloucestershire, England, centered on a strange competition. An 8-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled down a 200-yard hillside in the country. A group of runners chases it, trying to catch it. The problem is that the hill is too steep for a human to stay upright, so most of the runners fall awkwardly after a few steps and then tumble the rest of the way down.

The prize usually goes to the first person to reach the bottom of the hill.

Italy: Fruit Battle

Every year in February the Italian town of Ivrea stages a citrus battle royal, reenacting a semilegendary medieval uprising in which the town overthrew a tyrant. A horse-drawn cart carrying oranges and players representing the tyrant’s evil henchmen is drawn into the square, where it is swarmed by hordes of noble orange-throwing townspeople. The people on foot have special uniforms that divide them into nine traditional squads but nothing to soften the impact of an orange arriving at high speed. Cuts and bruises are to be expected.

Spain: Running of the Bulls

The Fiesta de San Fermín, held in July in Pamplona, Spain. Early in the morning on each day of the festival, about 2,000 brave souls line up at the start of an 875-meter running course through the streets of the city center. The fun starts at 8:00 am, when the human runners sprint down the course immediately followed by six charging bulls. Injuries are rarer than you’d think, but tramplings and gorings—including fatal ones—do occur.

Japan: Extreme Log Ride

Once every six years the Onbashira festival takes place in the Lake Suwa region of Nagano prefecture in Japan. The purpose of the festival is to replace the 16 log pillars that stand at the corners of the four buildings of the Suwa Grand Shrine. 16 carefully chosen fir trees in the mountains are cut down then dragged down to the temple without the use of mechanized equipment. The logs are usually about 20 meters long and weigh as much as 12 tones, so people have to work in large teams to hoist them up mountains and across rivers. The deadliest part, though, comes when the logs have to be moved downhill. Men ride straddling the logs as they hurtle down the mountainside. This can result in devastating injuries and death.