Boryeong Mud Festival - South Korea

This is a part of the A-Z April Challenge.

Holi. The festival of colours. A festival that many people dread, especially in South of India. As an ad on TV says “South Indian, No Holi”. I mean who would want to get themselves drenched in multicoloured water and look like an inspiration for psychedelic artists.

There are a bunch of people though who take it a notch higher. Most of them come together in Boryeong, South Korea in July every year. So, what do they play with? Tomatoes? Na, that’s so Spain. Eggs? Nopes, We do that in India. It must be Chocolate then is it? Nopes, too expensive. Alright, blurt it out already.

Welcome to the Boryeong Mud festival. Where you can do anything that’s mud. But, how did one even think of doing something like this? Mud is well, mud. How did a person conceive the idea of having a mud festival where people fling mud at each other and actually have fun doing it?

No, This isn't Takeshi's Castle

Boryeong is a small town in Korea, around 200 Kms from the capital city of Seoul. It’s most prized resource is mud. A good part of 9.9 million square meters of the area here is covered with mud, also known as the Boryeong Mud Flats. But, this is not your average dirty, yucky mud. The mud found here is said to be rich in minerals like Germanium and bentonites, which are supposed to be valuable ingredients for cosmetics and also prevent wrinkles.

Cashing in on this, a South Korean cosmetics company started a range of cosmetics using the mud from the mud flats in 1996. The company was quite small and couldn't afford to spend on advertising and commercials. Hence, the Boryeong Mud Festival was born. The company thought it was a great way to promote their products as their potential customers could experience the benefits of mud firsthand.

The festival started in 1998 and has been an annual attraction since then. The mud is taken from the mud flats to the Daecheon Beach each year in July for the visitors to get dirty in. It is quite famous among tourists, expats and native Koreans alike. It had a footfall of 2.2 million in 2011 and is expected to cross 3 million this year.

For the entirety of the festival, many attractions are erected along the beach area. These include mud pools, mud slides, mud prisons and Mud skiing (Yes, you heard it right). If mud is not your thing, there is live music and lots of competitions running for you. Or you could get acupuncture or treatments done for your skin using that very mud. For people who love to get messy even after the festival, there runs a small market selling the products made out of Boryeong mud. There is also a festival culminating fireworks display which one would not want to miss.

The Boryeong Mud festival this year will run from July 19^th to July 28^th. Book your tickets and indulge yourself. Or does Holi seem so much better all of a sudden?