From colourful parades to grungy music events, festivals are living, dancing museums of cultures and traditions.

    For travellers, there can be no better way to understand a country than by getting down and partying with fellow festivalgoers, at an event where they celebrate what makes them unique.

    Taking place around the globe and around the calendar, festivals reflect the world's diversity. Our selection ranges from Mexico's famous Day of the Dead to obscurer gatherings featuring bungee jumping or towering chariots, including a series of events taking place over the coming weeks and months.

    If you feel inspired to get festive but can't afford a flight to a far-flung destination, take a trip to Ireland's very own Galway Oyster Festival.

    Festival in the Desert, Mali (January)

    For three days a year, a desolate patch of Saharan sand, 65km north of Timbuktu, hosts 'the world's most remote music festival'. That's what the Festival in the Desert bills itself as, and it's a credible claim. The sandy site is half a day's jeep ride - or three days by camel if you have a tough derrière - from a town that is itself synonymous with inaccessibility.

    The event dates back centuries to gatherings where Tuaregs, the turban-wrapped Saharan nomads, would converge to race camels, show off their swordsmanship and exchange news on the desert grapevine. The Tuareg band Tinariwen consolidated these fireside get-togethers into a World Music event, and intrepid music buffs are intrigued by a gig that attracts the likes of Robert Plant and Manu Chau to the middle of nowhere.

    Venice Carnival, Italy (February)

    The high point in Venice's social calendar, Carnevale is a masked extravaganza, and your chance to spend 12 days looking like Phantom of the Opera. The world's best-known baroque fancy-dress party, it's as extravagant as Rio's Carnaval is riotous, celebrating the approach of spring with refined gusto.

    Venetians have been celebrating Carnevale since at least the 15th century. In those days private clubs organised masked balls, and popular entertainment included such gentle fun as bull-baiting and firing live dogs from cannons.

    Today, there's a procession of decorated boats and gondolas, jousts and mock military tournaments, calcio storico (a medieval approximation of football in period costume) and of course, the Grand Masked Ball.

    Bisket Jatra, Nepal (April)

    Celebrating the start of the Nepali New Year, a huge and ponderous chariot carrying images of the god Bhairab is hauled by dozens of villagers. The creaking and swaying chariot lumbers around town, pausing for a huge tug of war between the eastern and western sides of town. Next stop is the Khalna Tole temple, where a huge 25m-high lingam (phallic symbol) is erected in the stone yoni (female genital symbol) base.

    In the evening of the following day (New Year's Day), the pole is pulled down, again in an often-violent tug-of-war. As the pole crashes to the ground, the New Year officially commences.

    Naghol, Vanuatu (May)

    When the first yam crop emerges on the Vanuatu island of Pentecost, the southern islanders begin to build high wooden towers. Once completed, village men and boys dive from these rickety wooden structures with only two vines attached to their ankles to break their fall (yes, naghol was the inspiration for bungee jumping).

    To do it right, the vines should pull the divers up so near to the ground that their hair touches the soil. This is said to fertilise the ground, guaranteeing a bountiful yam harvest.

    Today, tourism as much as tradition drives the naghol ceremonies, with dives taking place mainly for show, but locals still have to adhere to traditional taboos in order to participate.

    Glastonbury Festival, England (June)

    Welcome to Glasto. The colossal summer knees up in King Arthur country is the world's biggest and best music festival. It's like Woodstock, except it takes place pretty much every year. The list of performers who have rocked the venue's muddy fields reads like a who's who of popular music, from Bob Dylan and David Bowie to Radiohead and Blur.

    And what a place to play. More than 175,000 revellers descend on 900 acres of farmland, bringing tents, 3L bottles of West Country cider and, if it's one of the 'muddy years', Wellington boots. As if following the local ley line, the atmosphere courses along tree-lined tracks; often with more direction than festivalgoers searching for that amazing noodle van they stumbled upon last night.

    Burning Man, USA (August/September)

    Burning Man is more than a festival, it's a utopian society that springs up on the cracked terrain of Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The survivalist happening's 10 principles include radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort and, above all, participation. These 10 hippy commandments lead to a 45,000-strong 'city' (the fifth largest in desolate Nevada) where inhibitions are left at the gates and freakery courses along the dusty streets.

    After the stiflingly hot day, when temperatures reach 40°C, the festival's population of 'burners' comes out to play. 'Art cars' - ranging from floats to one-man contraptions, swathed in neon or fairy lights and seemingly powered by psytrance - zip between the monumental sculptures dotting the plain.

    Before you dance under the stars, drop into a bar - the choice includes Irish, English and German pubs. This is where Burning Man really enters another dimension, because the drinks are all free: the festival has a gift economy and only items for sale are coffee and ice.

    Janmastami, India (September)

    Krishna's birthday is celebrated throughout India, but nowhere more enthusiastically than in Mathura, the blue-skinned deity's birthplace. Masses of pilgrims fast all day and cram into temples at night, chanting Sanskrit hymns, ringing bells, blowing conch shells (a symbol of Vishnu) and reading from the Bhagavad Gita. Flames flicker during the Aarthi ritual, in which lighted wicks, soaked in camphor or ghee (golden butterfat), are offered to statues of the deity. Cradles and statues of Balgopal, the boy Krishna, decorate the temples. The ceremonies, intended to relive the famous birth, conclude around midnight, by which time the flute-playing god would have been born.

    Imilchil Wedding Moussem, Morocco (September)

    This festival, held in the Moroccan mountain town of Imilchil, is all about livestock and finding a partner. The most famous example of 600-plus moussems (gatherings of Morocco's indigenous Berbers), the event is a homecoming celebration for herders who have spent the summer taking advantage of grazing grounds. The cattle fair adds to the chaos created by souqs (markets) and nomadic campgrounds.

    The matchmaking aspect of the festivities possibly began following a Romeo and Juliet-style tragedy. Nicknamed 'September romance', the occasion gives singletons the chance to sing, dance and flirt. Available men wear white turbans and their female opposites put on the family silver. If it all goes well, there are mass weddings, followed by a trip to the registrar for a favourite Moroccan activity: paperwork.

    Galway Oyster Festival, Ireland (September)

    The Galway Oyster Festival is dedicated to Ostrea edulis, the European flat oyster. Tens of thousands of the slippery critters are consumed on the Guinness Oyster Trail, on which 30 pubs give out free trays of the seafood with pints of the dark stuff. Each establishment has a dedicated opener, and there's more nimble-fingered action on display at the World Oyster Opening Championship. International contestants vie to break the world record, set here in 1977, for prizing open 30 of the tight-lipped urchins - one minute 31 seconds. The city fills with craic such as the opening ceremony, where the Oyster Pearl (festival queen) presents the season's first oyster to the mayor.

    Day of the Dead, Mexico (November)

    With its papier-mâché skeltons and candy skulls, Mexico's carnavelesque remembrance of departed souls is one of the world's most universally familiar festivals. Westerners find the Latino rave from beyond the grave, with its upbeat treatment of immortality, both fascinating and confronting.

    In a belief system inherited from the Aztecs, Mexicans believe their dead are lurking in Mictlan, a kind of spiritual waiting room, and they can return to their homes at this time of year. Participants devote a day to cleaning their family graves, decorating them with candles and flores del muerto (flowers of the dead), having picnics and dancing to mariachi bands. At night, the streets fill with funfares and papier-mâché skeletons, which are life-size but could never pass for the real thing in their dresses, jewellery, flowery boas and hats.