Celebrate good times and ancient traditions: readers’ favourite carnivals

After a two-year, Covid-enforced hiatus, this weekend marks the start of carnival around the world. Our revellers recall celebrations of singing, dancing and orange-hurling from festas past

The Montevideo carnival, which runs from January into early March is a well-kept secret with far fewer tourists than Rio’s more famous event, and has its own unique traditions and history. I stumbled on it when backpacking a few years ago. I had settled downto sleep in a hotel when the manic banging of drums followed by singing and dancing in the streets below kicked off a month of carnival celebrations. All of the capital’s barrios have samba contests, gigs, poetry readings and outrageous costume parades. The carnival has its origins in slavery times and features a lot of candombe – a music and dance genre created by the descendants of liberated African slaves.
Nick