Burning man festival
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In the middle of the Black Rock Desert every year a surreal city arises, the third largest city in Nevada complete with 50,000 inhabitants. It is the most well-known festival in the world; Burning Man. This week long event originated in the summer of 1986, when three friends on a San Francisco beach burned a doll. This created an annually recurring ritual that attracted more and more people. The beach became too small and the festival had to move to the desert.
The core values of the festival, as stated by the Burning Man organization, are radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.
Here's a brief overview of these principles:
Radical Inclusion: Everyone is welcome to Burning Man. There are no prerequisites for participation in the community.
Gifting: The Burning Man community values acts of gift-giving. The value of a gift is unconditional and does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification: To preserve the spirit of gifting, the community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising.
Radical Self-reliance: Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-expression: Arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content.
Communal Effort: The community values creative cooperation and collaboration, producing, promoting and protecting social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication.
Civic Responsibility: The community values civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants.
Leaving No Trace: The community respects the environment and is committed to leaving no physical trace of its activities. Participants clean up after themselves and strive to leave such places in a better state than they found them.
Participation: Transformative change can occur only through deeply personal participation.
Immediacy: Immediate experience is the most important touchstone of value in the culture. No idea can substitute for this experience.
More than twenty years after the festival started, this annual meeting has become the most bizarre event in the world. Visitors find themselves in one big spectacle of music, art, free love and self-expression for 24/7. Creative festival goers from all over the world are building the city together, sharing their food, water and everything needed to survive seven days of Burning Man. It is the ultimate place for people to be themselves. The festival owes its name to the absolute highlight; the burning of a meter-high doll. The Burning Man.
No food is available at the festival itself. So you have to take care of your own food. Burning Man lasts seven days, so make sure you buy enough. In the desert you lose a lot of moisture. A rule has been drawn up from the organization that you need to have five liters of water per day. This is excluding shower water. So make sure you have more than enough water with you.
How to get there?
To get there you first fly into Reno, after which you drive to Black Rock City in three hours. The camper, or your sleeping place, you can rent in Reno.
Where to stay in Reno?
Reno is not a spectacular place, but a good place to stay if you like peace and quiet is the Whitney Peak Hotel. The location is great and it had super comfy beds. They get an average rating of 8.9 on booking.com.