ETHICAL TRAVELLER: CATHERINE MACKon responsible tourism
WHEN WE VISITED Crete last year our neighbours greeted us with a garland of flowers. Naively I thought it was all just for me, but a quick look at my phrasebook and I realised they were saying happy Easter. Greek Orthodox Easter usually falls a few weeks later than back home. In Crete, villagers head into the mountains, gather wild flowers and make them into posies and garlands for friends and family.
I can’t recommend the picking-wild-flowers bit, but it beats the rush to the chocolate aisle in Tesco, which is more the tradition in my part of the world.
Traditional festivals are a great way of submerging yourself in a destination’s cultural heritage. Gaining a greater understanding of your hosts’ culture is as much a part of being a responsible traveller as contributing to their economy or protecting the landscape. I’m talking not about the Rio carnival or Mardi Gras but smaller, authentic festivities that are not marketed as huge tourist events.
If you want an excuse to visit Gozo, a 20-minute ferry journey off the coast of Malta, aim for the ancient festival L-Imnarja (June 28th and 29th), which commemorates St Peter and St Paul. Its roots are still very firmly in the soil, a time for farmers to celebrate their hard work through the year with wine, song and rabbit (the traditional food). Local men clear hangovers on the final day by riding through town on horseback. You can combine the festivities with a walking holiday provided by the responsible tour operator HF Holidays (www.hfholidays. co.uk).
Walkers must like wackiness. Upland Escapes (www.upland escapes.com) takes you to some of the most wonderfully obscure happenings on its walking breaks, such as the Feast of Snake Charmers in Abruzzo, Italy, on May 7th. This is a thank you to St Dominic, who was as nifty with Abruzzan snakes as St Patrick was with Irish ones. Join snake charmers and thousands of pilgrims as they climb to the isolated village of Cocullo to party. Or, on October 3rd, you can join the locals of Couserans, in the French Pyrenees, who still carry out the tradition of transhumance. This is not some odd religion but the seasonal movement of people and their livestock to find pasture. At the Transhumance Festival you can follow a procession down the mountain for winter, celebrating into the night with food, traditional music and a chance to buy goodies from many regional producers.
You can follow the cows back down the Slovenian mountains, too, in the annual Cow Ball, or Kravji Bal, from September 18th to 20th, which attracts thousands of locals to the town of Bohinj to eat, drink and be dairy. September is a good month in Slovenia, with the National Costume Festival in Kamnik, at the foot of the Kamniske Alps, on September 11th-13th, or catch the Festival of the Old Vine in Maribor, September 19th to 27th. The town is home to a 400-year-old vine, and the centre of three wine-growing routes. Expect the juices to flow from morning until night at this one (www.justslovenia.co.uk).
Wood-sculpting is an ancient tradition in Italy’s Dolomites, and is celebrated annually, this year from September 4th to 6th, in Ortisei. Local sculptors have established a prestigious event to sustain this local talent and, in particular, to promote some of the extraordinary work of the region’s young sculptors (www.unika.org). You can combine it with a walking holiday with Inntravel (www.inntravel.co.uk).
For more ideas, fest freaks can culture-surf for hours on www.joobili.com, a new site that tells you what to look out for, and when.
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