अजब-गज़ब – Page 5 – आवारा मुसाफिर

Bulgarians ward off evil spirits in ancient winter festival

January 17, 20231122 Views

Revellers dressed in red, some wearing huge masks and belts strung with large copper bells, dance around a fire on the main square of a Bulgarian village to drive away evil spirits and bring in good health and crops for the New Year. The festival, held every January in the village of Kosharevo, is known as "Surva" and is a mixture of Christian and pagan rituals that can be traced back to Thracian times. People wearing masks made of feathers participate in a winter festival in the village of Kosharevo, Bulgaria January 14, 2023. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov Some of the dancers, known as Survakars, or kukers (mummers), wear hand-made wooden masks decorated with feathers, which can be up to two metres high. The loud clanging of the bells on their belts is believed to ward off evil and disea...

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‘Dress like a cabbage’: Surviving Yakutsk, the world’s coldest city

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

January 16, 20231229 Views

Temperatures have plunged to minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit) this week in Yakutsk during an abnormally long cold snap in the Siberian city known as the coldest on earth. Located 5,000 km (3,100 miles) east of Moscow on the permafrost of the Russian Far East, residents of the mining city often see the thermometer regularly drop well below minus 40. "You can't fight it. You either adjust and dress accordingly or you suffer," said Anastasia Gruzdeva, outside in two scarves, two pairs of gloves and multiple hats and hoods. "You don't really feel the cold in the city. Or maybe it's just the brain prepares you for it, and tells you everything is normal," she added in the city shrouded by icy mist. Another resident, Nurgusun Starostina, who sells frozen fi...

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Army of pest-munching ducks keep South African vineyard blooming

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

January 16, 20231074 Views

Flocks of white, black and brown ducks hunt for snails and bugs as they patrol the grapevines at a vineyard in South Africa's winemaking town of Stellenbosch, helping the owners steer clear of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers. Around 500 Indian runner ducks work as a natural pest control at the Vergenoegd Löw Wine Estate, but also entertain wine-quaffing tourists. A flock of Indian Runner ducks, which assist as natural pest-control, in place of pesticides, by eating all the snails and bugs, walk amidst the grape vines during their daily patrol around the Vergenoegd Wine Estate, in Stellenbosch, in Cape Town, South Africa, January 12, 2023. REUTERS/Esa Alexander "We call them the soldiers of the vineyards," the managing director of the estate, Corius Visser, told Reuters. D...

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Peru communities settle scores with Christmas ritual fighting

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

December 28, 2022878 Views

Most Christmas ceremonies would be ruined if attendees threw a punch. But in Peru's mountainous south, participants of one Dec. 25 festival have exactly that in mind. On Christmas Day, hundreds of residents of Chumbivilcas province in Peru's Cusco region gather to take part in an ancient fighting ritual aimed at settling scores and resolving conflict before the year's end. Andean men participate in a one-on-one fight during the "Takanakuy", a traditional festivity at Chumbivilcas province, in Cuzco. REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil The tradition, which dates back generations, is known as Takanakuy, a Quechua name that roughly translates to hitting each other with fists. The ritual has been described as a method of alternative governance outside Peru's justice system. Fighters a...

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As climate clock ticks, aviator races to photograph glaciers

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

December 24, 2022768 Views

Chunks of ice float in milky blue waters. Clouds drift and hide imposing mountaintops. The closer you descend to the surface, the more the water roars — and the louder the “CRACK” of ice, as pieces fall from the arm of Europe’s largest glacier. The landscape is vast, elemental, seemingly far beyond human scale. The whole world, it seems, lies sprawled out before you. Against this outsized backdrop, the plane carrying the man who chases glaciers seems almost like a toy. Garrett Fisher, an American aviator and adventurer, looks out the window of his plane while on a mission to photograph glaciers in Norway, on July 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen) “No one’s there,” the man marvels. “The air is virtually empty.” This is Garrett Fisher’s playground — and, you quickly realize, his...

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Notorious island prison is now a Pacific tourist resort

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

December 18, 20221038 Views

One of Mexico's most notorious prisons begins a new chapter this weekend as a Pacific Ocean getaway after a makeover aimed at bringing in tourists to the former penal colony. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday evening opened the Islas Marias Tourist Center, bidding to turn the decades-old federal prison in the Islas Marias archipelago into an environmental attraction and place for history lovers. "This is tourism for excursions, to explore, to live with nature," Lopez Obrador said this week. "To recreate history, it's something exceptional, extraordinary." Alongside villas to lodge guests, a restaurant, a cafe and beaches, the revamped site includes an arch named after Nelson Mandela, who spent some 18 years behind bars on South Africa's Robben Island before bein...

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Faithful mates, hot tempers form primal life for gannets

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

November 16, 2022710 Views

Northern gannets share two maxims familiar to humans: “home sweet home” and “don’t tread on me.” They pack together on a Bonaventure Island plateau like New York commuters jamming a subway, only they’re louder. They are devoted parents and could teach humans a thing or two about loyalty in marriage. Year after year, gannet pairs come separately from distant, scattered Atlantic waters to reunite, mate again and raise new chicks on the precise nesting spots they called home before heading south for the winter. A northern gannet is visible on Bonaventure Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off the coast of Quebec, Canada's Gaspe Peninsula, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) The island just off Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula offers remarkable insights into the northern ga...

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Claim of new world record for longest beard chain

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

November 13, 2022511 Views

Facial hair enthusiasts claimed to have set a new world record for longest beard chain during an event in Wyoming on Friday, the Casper Star-Tribune reports. Participants gathered at Gaslight Social, a bar in Casper, where they stood side by side and clipped their beards together to create a hairy chain that was measured at 150 feet long, according to the newspaper. That’s more than double the Guinness World Record of 62 feet, 6 inches, set in Germany in 2007. Jimmy Preston, one of the lead organizers of the National Beard and Moustache Championships, gets his beard clipped to another man's beard, Friday, Nov. 11, 2022, at The Gaslight Social in Casper, Wyo. (Lauren Miller/The Casper Star-Tribune via AP) To participate, people needed to sport a beard at least 8 inches long, accor...

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In Mexico, Day of the Dead is actually a celebration of life

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

October 31, 2022281 Views

During the Day of the Dead celebrations that take place in late October and early November in Mexico, the living remember and honor their dearly departed, but with celebration — not sorrow. Marigolds decorate the streets as music blares from speakers. Adults and children alike dress as skeletons and take photos, capturing the annual joy-filled festivities. It is believed that during the Day of the Dead — or Dia de Muertos — they are able to commune with their deceased loved ones. People dressed as Mexico's iconic "Catrinas" march in the Grand Procession of the Catrinas, part of upcoming Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) No one knows when the first observance took place, but it is rooted in agriculture-related beliefs fr...

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Paddle your own pumpkin: racers descend on Belgian pond

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

October 25, 2022814 Views

Hundreds of competitors, many dressed up as pirates, nuns, animals or vegetables, climbed into carved-out pumpkins and paddled them around a pond in northern Belgium, in an annual relay race. The race in Kasterlee started in 2008 after local growers decided they needed to find a different use for their 400-plus kg (880-pound) pumpkins besides turning them into soup, and it has grown in popularity, said local Pumpkin Society chairman Paul Boonen. Contestants compete during the Pumpkin Regatta, an annual pumpkin boat relay race, in the Belgian town of Kasterlee, Belgium October 23, 2022. REUTERS/Bart Biesemans This year, after a two-year break for COVID-19, it was fully booked inside three days with 65 teams of max four who took turns the week before Halloween to manhandle a fleet ...