New Orleans: more than Mardi Gras

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: This is, perhaps, the best way to explain the grand city of New Orleans on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Bourbon Street, blues and jazz, beignets and Mardi Gras are all essentially New Orleans things, but simply not the only things that the city, commonly referred to as Nola (New Orleans, Louisiana), is about.

While Mardi Gras is undoubtedly the biggest festival and party in town, New Orleans pulls out all stops—and the big bucks—when it comes to Halloween celebrations and decorations. The Big Easy—the city’s nickname that evokes its relaxed yet lively vibe—has among the best music scenes in the world with Grammy winners and Grammy nominees performing almost every week; it is also a production hub for Hollywood, which loves to shoot films and TV series here.

Nola has a vibrant sporting culture, with its football teams, The Saints and Louisiana State University (LSU) Tigers, as famous as its infamous storm season. No matter what your jam, New Orleans has something for everyone: Lovely parks and museums, excellent sailing, great food, a legendary cocktail culture, a healthy obsession with voodoo and ghosts, and plenty of festivals all year long.

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If you visit New Orleans, don’t plan the trip for the cliched plantation tours, after-dark ghost walks in cemeteries and swamp visits, but instead time it to coincide with the many smaller, quirkier festivals unique to this charming city. In fact, avoiding the big-ticket festivals is a way to enjoy the city without the crowds and chaos.

There is a festival in New Orleans almost every month and at times they overlap. Some are world famous, such as the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Film Festival. Others like the Mac n Cheese Fest, the French Quarter Fest, the NOLA Pickle Fest or the Beignet Festival are less so but are just as much fun. New Orleans even has a Fried Chicken Festival that gobbles up an entire weekend.

While Mardi Gras’ grandest parade with performers, marching bands, dancers and gloriously decorated floats, takes place late February or early March, numerous smaller parades begin from King’s Day, which is observed on 6 January, and take place in different neighbourhoods. These parades are a family affair for the people of New Orleans. The showpiece Mardi Gras parades attract thousands of out-of-town revellers.

People atop floats dressed in costumes and colours to match toss beads, toys and candy to the crowd as the procession weaves through the different neighbourhoods before culminating in the French Quarter, the city’s oldest neighbourhood.

Excited children run after the floats, the procession of which starts well before noon and ends by early evening. Once the kids go home, the party moves to the bars and streets, most notoriously to Bourbon Street where men and women toss beads from the balconies of the bars to pedestrians who catch their fancy or flash them. And right in the middle of the throngs enjoying all the debauchery, stand staunch believers with placards in the hope of insulting or inspiring people into repenting instead of risking the wrath of God.

In 2025, Mardi Gras is scheduled for 4 March and the jazz fest kicks off on 24 April. Landing at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport during these two festivals can be a nightmare as is finding a cab or a car rental. Finding affordable accommodation is nigh on impossible (I paid an eye-watering $125, or around ₹10,400, per night for a bunk bed in a four-people dormitory with shared toilets during Mardi Gras).

You are better off visiting this lovely city, which has a half decent public transport system with streetcars and buses, any other time of the year, barring the peak hurricane season between late August and early September. You can still get the festival experience: take the Fried Chicken Festival, for instance, which has stall after stall selling the hero dish alongside other great food.

It is one of the most relaxed and fun festivals I have been to. Despite festival’s focus, a vegetarian like me didn’t struggle to find food. The crowds are big enough to meet new people, including locals, but not so big that you get sucked into an endless queue for a porta-potty or can’t find your friends. The Fried Chicken Festival, like most New Orleans’ festivals, is free. 

Music, especially jazz and blues, is a part of everything in New Orleans, including the festivals. The Fried Chicken Festival, every year, has multiple stages with local bands headlining each day. I remember happily tapping my feet for a couple of hours in a light drizzle in 2019 along with hundreds of others on the New Orleans Riverwalk alongside the Mississippi, singing along to Led Zeppelin hits performed by Bonerama, a trombone-powered brass funk and rock bank.

I have also attended the day-long Mac n Cheese Fest, which is smaller than the Fried Chicken Festival. It had plenty of innovative and creative Mac n Cheese recipes, including delicious, deep-fried Mac n Cheese dumplings, being dished out to the patrons, a large number of whom were enthusiastic kids eating their favourite American meal. The number of innovative recipes with something as insipid as Mac n Cheese are sure to leave you pleasantly surprised as you listen to the bands performing on a single stage in a small park near the French Quarter.

From the Beignet Fest to the NOLA Coffee Festival, there are more reasons than just Mardi Gras and jazz fest to visit New Orleans.

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