Like all forces of Nature, earth — in its gritty, runny form — can give both great joy and great pain. It can relax and rejuvenate, it can get you into a party mood or leave you reflecting on the destruction it leaves in its wake sometimes.
In it to win it
There’s a reason Daecheon beach is called Mud Square: for an entire week in July, that's all there is, as far as the eye can see. The Boryeong Mud Festival is South Korea's biggest attraction for global tourists, and it's easy to guess why. Experiences range from relaxing and adventurous, to flat out all-night partying. Think concerts and air shows, rowdy bouts of mud wrestling, mud slides and mud obstacle races. While rowdy bouts of mud wrestling, slides and obstacle races set the tone of the event, there are plenty of niche and relaxing experiences to have as well, like massages and mud baths. That's not all: full-fledged concerts and air shows are also part of the deal, as are EDM parties and hip hop raves. No matter which you choose, you'll spend every minute covered in grit.
One-day passes for adults are 10,000 won each (don't worry, one won is 0.06 Indian Rupee), while entries are free for senior citizens, babies and people with disabilities travelling with a guardian. So keep your party hats ready for July, as long as you don't mind it getting dirty.
Soaking it in
For those with a quieter taste, mud baths around the world are confidently touted to have healing properties. While the medicinal abilities of the mud they use is up for debate, travellers across the board swear by the sense of rejuvenation they get from soaking themselves in it, letting it dry all over them and then washing it off. An au naturel face pack, if you will, albeit for the entire body.
Dalyan, Turkey - May 31, 2015 : People are taking mudbath in 39 degree celcius thermal sulphurous mud pool in Dalyan, Mugla.
There’s a gamut of options. Just off the Colombian port city of Cartagena, for instance, stands Volcan de Lodo El Totumo, a mud volcano around 50 feet high. Visitors drive up, and climb down into the crater full of dense mud, as attendants wait by to slather them and wash them clean afterwards.
The mud baths of Dalyan, Turkey, on the other hand, consist of a swimming pool full of mud for you to float and swim about, and another body of water to dip in and cleanse yourself.
In Rotorua, New Zealand, the experience is geothermal. Te Puia comprises two natural mud pools, where temperatures reach 90° C. The Hell’s Gate spa alone sees over 70,000 visitors through the year, informs Scott Zhang, sales and marketing manager of the Wai Ora group, adding, “Winter is amazing for geothermal experiences.”
Fighting to cope
Not all mud is therapeutic, however. Sidoarjo, Indonesia, is living proof of its destructive powers. In 2006, in a phenomenon commonly termed the "lusi mud flow", mud just began spewing out of the ground in a paddy field, and didn't stop. Such was its scale and speed that it began to be called a “mud volcano”, though the cause is still under debate.
What is not under debate, is that the mud flow killed 20 people, displaced around 40,000, and rendered the erstwhile fertile spot in East Java uninhabitable. More than 10 years on, the flow still hasn't stopped.
Villagers who used to live there don't want the incident forgotten. One attempt towards this is the slew of statues that now dot the muddy expanse, depicting half-buried people in the sludge. Former residents now ferry tourists around the area, driving them pillion on mopeds, explaining what they have lost. For many, it's a source of income; for most, the trickle of tourists they receive is just a way of keeping their cause alive.
