Carnival of Xanthi, Greece, 2019 - Part I

Enjoying and photographing the famous Xanthi carnival in Greece was on my travel-photo-list for quite some time. This year I was very dedicated to visiting this wonderful and as it appeared later, joyful and colorful festival!

This appears to be the largest carnival in Northern Greece, beginning somewhere in mid February and culminating on Sunday in the weekend in mid March, this year on 10th of March.

Xanthi is really an impressive city, diverse in many many ways. You may know that the official religion in Greece is Eastern Orthodox Christianity however in Xanthi there are few mosques as well. I managed to get few photos from the city itself and I am going to show them to you in Part II, so stay tuned. I decided to split this story into two parts as I have almost 50 photos that I really wanted to include in my photo story, but it will become too long, won't it? ;)

---

At the beginning of the marsh, it was possible to walk and wander around the participants and take few isolated portraits without attracting much attention.

Of course, you're about to being noticed eventually!

...and saluted! We received a countless amount of smiles in that day!

---

According the officials there were more than 50 groups of carnival participants but it felt much bigger as the whole ceremony took several hours

Does this tradition come from the past when all the roles in the theater had been played by males? ;)

---

From a certain point of time on, it was impossible to walk around as the main carnival street is not that big. Nevertheless I think this is a big advantage as I felt like being a part of the show and not only an observant.

Ah, I almost forgot to mention I've got several air kisses that day which triggered some jealousy, of course! :P

Some of the participants insisted for group photos and I was more than happy to take those and be the target for more smiles and air-kisses :) :P

This defining air-kissing-moment is the splitting point to my Xanthi photo story, I really hope you've enjoyed my works and you're looking forward and staying tuned for the second part ;)

I just want to mention that all Xanthi photos I took that day could be licensed for editorial usage from my Shutterstock gallery set (external link).

Copyright: Damian Hadjiyvanov, Light Captured
If you want to use any of my visuals, please drop me a message, I'm on Discord: lightcaptured#2698

• Check out my phlog: https://hadjiyvanov.com/
• Come and join me at Wirex! Sign up and we'll both earn free Bitcoin! https://wirexapp.com/r/lightcaptured
• Support me by buying digital or printed copies of my visuals: https://lightcaptured.picfair.com/
• Get passive income: https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=VPLfW16yTS
• Be smart with your STEEM and SBD: https://smartsteem.com?r=lightcaptured

Thank you and have a great day!

---