Summer weather brings people together
outside to enjoy music festivals, county fairs, carnivals and religious
observations. I've gathered here some recent images of these
celebrations, including a flaming horseman in Kyrgyzstan, Bastille Day
in France, a German fun park inside a former nuclear power plant, and
much more. [39 photos]
A girl on her father's shoulders looks through a maze of sunflowers
growing in a field during a three-day sunflower festival in the town of
Nogi, Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo, on July 24, 2011. A total of
some 200,000 sunflowers welcomed guests for the summer festival, an
annual draw for the small town. (Kazuhuro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images)
A monk wearing a mask performs a dance on the first day of two-day
festival in Hemis Gompa, 45 km (28 miles) southeast of Leh, on July 10,
2011. The Hemis Gompa is the oldest and biggest monastery in Ladakh. The
annual festival celebrates the birth anniversary of Guru Padmasambhava,
the founder of Lamaism (an off-shoot of Buddhism) in the eighth
century. The two-day festival is marked by ritual dancing in which
dancers wear masks representing deities and evil spirits. (Reuters/Fayaz Kabli) # 
People dressed in traditional Breton costumes take part in the annual
Fete du Goemon (Seaweed Festival) near Esquibien in western Brittany, on
July 24, 2011. The festival re-enacts traditional means of gathering
seaweed from the coast and burning it in open kilns to make fertilizer. (Reuters/Mal Langsdon) #
A herd of ponies makes their way towards shore during the Chincoteague
Wild Pony Swim on Wednesday, July 27, 2011. The ponies swim from
Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge to Chincoteague Island, Virginia,
to be sold at auction to benefit the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire
Company. (AP Photo/The Virginian-Pilot, Brad Vest) #
People walk past lanterns during the annual Mitama festival at the
Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, on July 13, 2011. About 3,000 paper lanterns
are lit to comfort the souls of dead during the annual four day festival
at the shrine where more than 2.4 million war dead are enshrined. (Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon) #
The scenery for the opera "Andre Chenier" by Italian musician Umberto
Giordano is seen on a giant floating stage at Lake Constance during a
photo rehearsal in Bregenz, Austria, on July 15, 2011. The opera,
directed by British director Keith Warner, will have its premiere on
July 20 at the annual Bregenz festival. (Reuters/Dominic Ebenbichler) #
Folk artists perform as part of their prayers inside the Jagannath
temple on the eve of the Rath Yatra, also known as the "the Chariot
Festival", in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, on July 2, 2011. The
annual religious procession commemorates a journey by Hindu god
Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra, in specially made
chariots. (Reuters/Amit Dave) #
Dancers take the stage at the Guelaguetza, a nine-day folkloric
festival celebrating Oaxaca state's seven cultural regions through
dance, parades and pageantry, in Oaxaca, Mexico, on July 25, 2011.
Guelaguetza means "offering" in the Mexican Indian Zapotec language, and
historians believe different versions of the festival have been
celebrated since pre-Colonial times. (Reuters/Jorge Luis Plata) #
Kayapo Indians stand in a line during a ritual dance in a multiethnic
village during the Meeting of Traditional Cultures of Chapada dos
Veadeiros in Goias, Brazil, on July 23, 2011. The meeting is a
celebration of Brazilian popular culture and the intersection between
the various manifestations of traditional culture around the midwest and
across the country. (Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino) #
An Indian Muslim girl offers prayers at a graveyard during Shab-e-Barat
in Gauhati, India, on July 17, 2011. Muslims visit ancestral graveyards
for the salvation of the departed souls and also believe that all sins
will be forgiven by praying to Allah throughout Shab-e-Barat night. (AP Photo/ Anupam Nath) #
A woman hides her face as other festival-goers spray mud at her after
she infringed a game rule in a mud ring during the 14th Boryeong Mud
Festival at Daecheon beach in Boryeong, South Korea, on July 17, 2011.
Around 2 to 3 million domestic and international tourists visit the
beach during the festival each year to enjoy mud activities such as mud
slides, mud wrestling and mud massages. (Reuters/Jo Yong-Hak) #
A carnival ride turns inside of the cooling tower of a former nuclear
power plant in Kalkar, Germany, near the border with the Netherlands, on
May 28, 2011. The plant was constructed from 1977 to 1986, but never
operated as a nuclear power plant. Now the plant has been converted to a
fun park called "Wunderland Kalkar" and receives some 600,000 visitors a
year. (Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images) #
Horsemen take part in a Kok-boru, or goat dragging, competition as they
attend a festival of Kyrgyz folklore and popular traditions near the
Son-Kul lake, on July 21, 2011. Considered Kyrgyzstan's national sport,
Kok-boru is a traditional Central Asian game where players grab a goat
carcass from the ground while riding their horses and try to score by
placing it in their opponent's goal. (Reuters/Vladimir Pirogov) #
Hot-air balloons take off during the first day of the Lorraine World
Air Balloons festival, on July 22, 2011 in the French city of Chambley.
The festival is the biggest gathering of hot-air balloons in the world
and about 400,000 spectators were expected to attend the event. (Jean-Christophe Verhaegan/AFP/Getty Images) #
A hot air balloon rises into the early morning sky in front of the
Canary Wharf financial district of London, on July 25, 2011. Seven
balloons took part in the flight over London as part of a collaboration
between the London Sky Orchestra project, the 30th anniversary of the
London International Festival of Theatre, and the Greater London
Authority which is marking a year to go before the 2012 Olympic Games. (Reuters/Andrew Winning) #
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