Photo Link:
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So after Bolivia, I came home to primarily work on my grad school applications, since I figured it would be far easier to be productive while working from the US than while traveling. Obviously I was coming home regardless for Burning Man, but coming back a bit earlier to get this done was also an excuse to see my parents for longer and visit a bunch of friends. My first weekend back in NY, I got brunch with the guy who I did my Tajikistan roadtrip with (still my alltime favorite trip!), hung out with my sister for a night and then saw a friend from my old job in Chicago (who now works in real estate in NYC, like literally everyone else) for brunch before seeing two college friends for the evening. Soon after that, flew out to Chicago for a bit. Much like the last two times I visited, I was definitely glad to be back to see everyone again, but honestly did not find myself missing the city at all when coming back…nothing like that feeling I get when I come back to NYC, or the feeling I got when going back to places like London, Delhi, or Chennai. Honestly a bit surprised that my view on Chicago hasn’t softened over time, but I guess that further reinforced my decision to not apply to grad school in UChicago, which does have a pretty good program for the stuff I want to do.
Chicago was honestly really fun. Stayed at first for a few days with my friends Kris and Maddie, whose Chicago wedding I had went to last summer. One highlight of this was playing a LOTR board game called War of the Ring, which was this 3-4+ hour extravaganza of a board game. They also hosted a Christmas in July party one night I was there, which was honestly so much fun as all ~20+ of the guests had also dressed up. Kris’ high school friend Jon was also visiting for this (and Lollapalooza)…he was the one who met me in Argentina for 2 weeks there so was good catching up. The very next day, I got invited to a yacht/boat party that another college friend was throwing, where we just hung out and drank on the lake for like 5 hours, which was obviously a blast. But yea, was good just catching up with old friends, as I bounced around a few different couches to see different people and also not overstay my welcome anywhere. Besides just seeing and hanging out with people, another obvious highlight of the trip was my last supper in Chicago, which was at Au Cheval, which is hands down the best burger I will ever have in my life. I’ve probably been there 20+ times in my life, no joke. Another cool touristy highlight was visiting the Field Museum for the first time, which was lowkey a great museum. Cool dinosaur bones, and great historic artifacts from places like Egypt and Latin America (and even indigenous populations of the modern day US).
Interestingly, tons of my Chicago friends are now homeowners (which means I’ll need to keep visiting for the forseeable future), and they all also live along the Blue Line area of Wicker/Bucktown, which I feel is an area I never really hung out in much while I lived in Chicago. A lot of them also either have pets or are looking to get them soon, which along with being homeowners and having guest bedrooms, shows just how old we are all getting. But it is kind of crazy to see everyone “settling down” while I’m out here just doing my own thing. I will say that I have zero desire to follow that lifestyle anytime soon (sorry Mom!). One other thing I will say, is that even though I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Chicago, I definitely was glad to leave and go back to New York. As fun as it was, two weeks of basically nonstop meeting with people was honestly more exhausting than almost any of the traveling that I have done.
Went back to New York for a couple of weeks afterwards to grind out more work on my applications and see friends in the city on the weekends. Saw some more close friends from high school and college, and also got brunch with one of the girls who was with me when we hiked down the volcano outside Quito during the hail and lightning storm, so we were able to reminisce about that near death experience. I also got lunch with a travel influencer girl who I met in a Facebook group for people who are interested in more “out there” travel, as we are tentatively planning on going to Afghanistan together (with 1-2 other people) from Oct 27-Nov 7/8. We of course got lunch at an Afghan restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen, and this only got me more excited for this trip.
I also booked a Bruce Springsteen concert ticket which I was super excited for – he’s literally at the top of my list of people who are still touring and who I haven’t seen live yet, along with The Kinks, if they count (Led Zeppelin would also obviously be up here if and when they ever reunite). However, the catch is that this concert is on July 8, 2023, in London. So I guess I’ll be ending my whole retirement world tour in early to mid July in England before coming back to NY and resetting before grad school. Would be going with my friend Martin and one of his old LBS friends, since they’ve now all graduated.
I spent a couple of days in Boston as well to see my good friend Brad, who I hadn’t seen since I flew back directly from Jordan to New York in Feb 2021 before my other friend Arjun’s bachelor party. Also got lunch with a couple of other friends for the two days I was in Boston. Pretty nondescript couple of days but it was fun to catch up with Brad, given his hectic lifestyle of residency. Soon after that, I flew to the Bay Area to stay with my cousin and his wife in El Cerrito before and after Burning Man. Was cool to catch up after a couple of years (we did Yosemite together in July 2020), and was also interesting to discover that they are both huge board game nerds…I feel like more and more of my friends are independently becoming board game people.
Honestly, the anticipation and buildup for Burning Man was insane. The closest parallel I have ever had in my life was the two weeks between the Eagles beating the Vikings and playing the Patriots in Super Bowl LII back in Feb 2018. Just a crazy sense of excitement internally. I was so, so happy that it lived up to the hype, and then some. Despite the past three years of honestly living a beyond awesome life traveling around the world, doing cool stuff and seeing cool places, I can confidently say that both Burning Mans, in 2019 and 2023, are quite comfortably the coolest/most meaningful things I have ever done, and it is honestly not even close. I would say both burns were equally as cool, though very different as this time I was solo camping and did not have a bike. Though I would say that the first one was probably *slightly* more impactful, but only because I had literally no idea what to expect then.
This year was outrageously hot – even the nights barely dipped below the 80s, as opposed to typical burns where night time can drop to the 50s or 60s. Daytime regularly approached and passed 100. The cherry on top was the constant dust storms, which I absolutely loved. There were numerous occasions where the visibility was barely more than 5 feet, and this would go on for hours at a time – this was due to constant 50mph+ winds kicking the dust up. There were a couple at night time which was a little scary – everyone is lit up at night so all the art cars and bikes can see, but the dust made most people’s lights functionally useless. But it was just so, so cool to experience these totally wild conditions. I always maintain that everyone looks more attractive at Burning Man, and the layers of dust that you accumulate are a huge reason why. Girls just look hotter and guys look more badass. And this was especially since 2019 was a super mild burn with really no adverse weather conditions to speak of. I know that many people this year did not like the weather but to me it was just so awesome and unique. I really embraced the dust and will probably have a dust cough for the next few weeks as a consequence of that. One side note – the best piece of clothing for Burning Man is the shemagh, which is this Middle Eastern headscarf that is honestly quite versatile – can use it to protect your face from the dust, to protect your head from the heat, or to wrap around as a scarf when it is cold at night (it was not cold at all this year but it usually is) and also to protect your neck and chest from sunburn. And everyone just looks so much cooler when wearing a shemagh.
Honestly too many highlights to even speak of. I did keep a small little diary of written notes so I can remember things (since my phone was locked away in a zip lock bag…used my GoPro with the protective diving case as a camera). But I’ll start with, for me, what makes Burning Man just such a magical place. For one – everyone around you is more or less living their best life. I’m not religious or spiritual, but I think of it like a wedding – a big reason the best weddings are fun is because you feel the fun atmosphere around you and it lifts you up. This is basically like that but on steroids – all 70k-80k people around you just living unencumbered, free, and totally in their best place is contagious. Sort of like a crazy, positive feedback loop of everyone pushing everyone higher. I do think that a big part of the culture of Burning Man is sort of a pushback on society. So whatever is deemed “inappropriate” in the real world is sort of released as a pressure valve here – hence all the straight guys cross-dressing, all the dicks and boobs hanging out, and the openly sexual nature of a lot of things here. I’m going to be honest – I’m quite content, to put it mildly, with my life so don’t really feel the need to embrace some of these things myself since I don’t really have a pressure valve to open up. BUT, seeing everyone else just fully let go and live life to the fullest for a week is for me just a wonderful experience. Like even the most cynical person has to appreciate everyone else living their best life.
Speaking of the people – Burning Man is far and away the most diverse place I have ever been to, and 2022 was more of the same from 2019. Socioeconomically, you get people from all walks of life, and I would say the most “common” you meet on playa (so playa is the word for the entire place, deep playa is the part of the playa where most of the art is, and Black Rock City is the part of the playa where people live) is like mid 40s with a heavy, anarcho-punk streak. It honestly is quite amusing how the stereotype of Burning Man is rich hippies doing drugs – you obviously do have a lot of those, but they’re probably no more than 5-10k of the 75k people there. But I guess they are the ones who are most visible on social media, so I suppose it makes sense. But yea – the median income for the 2019 burn was like just under 70k USD, so while you obviously do have a ton of well-off people here, for me, just seeing and interacting with people from everywhere in the world is amazing. You’ll never see another place where an on/off homeless person and a Silicon Valley engineer hit it off – hell, that was quite literally my camp in 2019. There’s always a crazy strong international presence, and this year was no different – I anecdotally met literally dozens of Argentinians, Australians, Brits (including a Leeds fan who tackled me in joy when he found out I was a fan!), Russians, and more. And the age range is nuts – I love seeing families with little kids and would love to do that myself one day, and you go all the way up to people in their 80s who are just some of the coolest people to talk to. But yea, meeting babies and little kids is absolutely the best. Honestly easily a few thousand under-12s I feel. And you know they will grow up to be extremely open-minded. Ethnically, this year was definitely more diverse than 2019 – I would give “the nod” to every brown dude I saw, and there were visibly more African Americans and Latinos as well.
There’s literally no judgement here (and how can there be with all the cross dressing and dicks and boobs hanging out), and that just leads to more wholesome and deeper conversations with the people that you do meet. I think a combination of it being judgement free and the general positive state of mind everyone is in really leads to more meaningful and interesting conversations with random people that you meet while walking and biking around. Like these are all legitimately deep conversations – almost like replaying the absolute best dates you have ever been on, but with potential romantic female interests and platonically with girls and “bro-dating” with guys. It’s just such a unique environment for that. And because of there being no cellphones, there is an ephemeral sense to all these interactions, where you make the most if it and then they are gone, most likely forever. Even the fact that Burning Man is only a week long really teaches you to enjoy the moment when it lasts and to stop worrying. Ultimately, all of human life is meaningless (who’s going to remember any of us within a few decades of us dying?), so for me, it means that you have to take advantage of the little moments and make them count for yourself, and all of the amazing, fleeting interactions of Burning Man do just that. There is something beautiful about knowing you won’t see a person again, but still sharing a really intimate bonding experience with them, and the playa is really the only place on earth where that happens.
Some random stranger encounters…on the final night of Burning Man for the temple burn, met this really cool girl from Lima, and just hanging out with her and her friends at a classic rock themed camp was a cool way to end it. There was a fellow solo camper near my tent who was also a first timer, and we hung out on multiple days…he was nice enough to ditch his bike and walk with me which was honestly very considerate. This older Indian dad who was my parents’ age…was cool to meet a Desi dad given the stereotypes that exist about immigrant parents. A couple from Wyoming who were super into climbing, so bonding over that and my recent ice climbing experience in Bolivia. An Israeli girl who also quit her job 3 years ago to travel around the world, though her timeline is longer than my total 4 years because she had saved up more money and isn’t thinking about long term grad school after. This Japanese-American girl who was a first timer and said she was finally breaking out of her corporate Silicon Valley identity and shell. And in a weirdly memorable way, this older couple from Denver where the dude was like a 10 time burner and the girl was first timer who was absolutely HATING it. Selfishly, it made me sort of think hard as to why I enjoy Burning Man since it objectively is a cult (and for a good reason…it’s fucking awesome). But it was actually really rewarding to help get her out of a bad space and at least begin to enjoy the moment, even if it’ll never be the transformative experience for her that it was for a lot of others. But she did reach out afterwards and it sounded like the rest of her burn was awesome AND she wants to go again, so that was really a cool thing for me. I do truly find it very important to push your boundaries and leave your comfort zone to grow as a person, and I think Burning Man is great for that. Like as a very mild example for myself, I did a few relatively “out there” spin the wheels that certain camps required you to do before grabbing a drink.
Much like the beauty of all of these legitimately cool, fleeting interactions, the lack of phones and brevity of the event also makes you appreciate all the amazing artwork even more. Burning Man really is second to none when it comes to art, and the art this year was just as cool as in 2019. So many flat out amazing pieces of static art and art cars – my favorite cars were of course El Pulpo Mechanico (the giant octopus that shoots out 9 jets of flame), a giant white dragon that would shoot out fire from his mouth, and a big white LED blimp car that was called…L.E.D. Zeppelin. I actually rode on that car on my second to last night, and they were blasting surprisingly good EDM remixes of Led Zeppelin songs all night long.
So a little on some of the standout art pieces for me. There was this super weird cat astronaut installation, where there was a cat shaped space ship and like 20 cat mannequins all dressed up in astronaut uniforms. There was a phoenix that was built from scrap metals…I met the artist outside the piece and he was saying that he used to live in Paradise, CA before a 2018 fire destroyed his whole town. He then went back, collected a ton of scraps, and built this rising phoenix for Burning Man out of this. Thought this was a very powerful example of simply making the most of the shit life throws at you. Another nifty piece was one of a little child facing a monster, but inside the monster’s giant mouth was just another little child. Guess it symbolized how there is humanity in all monsters, since we are our own worst enemies. Other cool pieces were (obviously) the man himself, this giant tree-tower structure that was built by the same team of my favorite art from 2019 (the Folly!), this old school train station that was built out in the middle of nowhere, a giant, narrow ladder with business-dressed mannequins lining up for a futile climb (the corporate ladder! of course) and this really cool shiny metallic head with flaming red hair. And of course, my favorite interactive art piece was the same as in 2019 – a giant circular light umbrella that you could lie down under and appreciate a crazy trippy display to while jamming out to synchronized classical music from the nearby speaker systems. As long as you were lying down when there was no wind, otherwise dust would be all over your eyes, nose, and mouth.
One thing that came up in a conversation with the late founder of Burning Man’s brother and nephew (more on that later), was how the harshness of the environment is vital to the beauty of the experience. If Burning Man took place on a pleasant meadow, it would be “just another” fun event. But the harshness of the landscape makes you appreciate the beauty of everything around you. I think that’s also a huge, huge reason why some of my favorite travel experiences are just these crazy harsh landscapes where life struggles to survive – think of Tajikistan, Ladakh, Namibia, Wadi Rum in Jordan, and even to a lesser degree places like the southwest US. It really puts in perspective just how unimportant we humans are, and again, that is the best way for me to truly embrace things. And speaking of harsh climates, this year in particular was brutal. I was talking to a bunch of crusty old burners (like 20+ burns) and they said this was one of the worst in terms of wind. The whiteouts truly were absolutely wild and insane. Maybe I’m unique here but for me the weather was beautiful…a lot of people talk about having “ups and downs” at Burning Man for me it’s just ups and higher ups. I never really crashed or had any negative thoughts because I legitmately was having the time of the life, and the harsh weather really only helped that for me. This was the same for me in 2019, and I do think that me being physically prepared (and also in general being someone who doesn’t really get stressed outside of Eagles and Leeds games) meant that I was able to not really have any downs at the playa.
There is a sense of snarkiness (in the best way) on playa, and a common refrain is “Fuck your Burn”. I’ve always interpreted that as fuck YOUR burn, it’s our burn, stop being selfish. And I think that goes for the general feeling here I was talking about earlier, where you genuinely feel uplifted by seeing everyone else being so happy. Another common saying is “The Playa Provides”, and it makes zero logical sense, yet it is crazy how often people find things they need from others in this dusty paradise when it can be the most random things. Whether it was a lady I met who broke her wrist and found another person with a spare left wrist cast (who carries that???), to an interaction I saw where an artist painting a board needed some bright green tape and a dude walking by said he had it at his camp (why?), to a guy who lost his bike and then found a broken bike a camp was giving away 12 hours later, and then walked and found a bike repair camp that was closed, but the lady there still fixed it for him…there is a real sense of everyone having everyone’s back (I’ve always maintained that this is the safest place in the world to do drugs), and I think that lends itself to the playa providing.
One more bit on the amazingness of Burning Man in general before I get into specific stories. But it really is like being a child again. There is no sense of routine (besides me taking my morning shit just after 8am when my local portapotties got their daily cleaning), and you are always on your toes in terms of what you will see next…whether it is a David Hasslehoff themed bar with signed pictures of the man himself, or a Taylor Swift singalong party (I somehow ran into two of these. Also, I heard Blank Space like 5 times and that weirdly is the song of my 2022 Burn, much like how Kesha’s Die Young is the song of my 2019 Burn because it was the first song I heard at the Thunderdome, which was my first activity of my first night ever on playa), or a Christmas bar (!!!!), or a Legends of the Hidden Temple inspired obstacle course, or a volleyball court that is also lit up at night (one of my all time favorite memories is playing volleyball til 5am with my friend Greg in my first burn), or a sake bomb bar, or a Disney sing-a-long party, or a Beatles karaoke session, or stumbling into a delicious camp that is serving grilled cheese, or hot dogs, or a breakfast burrito, or bacon, or just a refreshing lemonade, or wandering into a intricately built wooden chapel in deep playa that is for a “fake” religion, or discovering a dildo see-saw hanging out in the middle of nowhere in deep playa, or seeing little kids bike along with their parents while exploring funky artwork, or a camp offering yoga or spa services, or a camp offering random board games, or a rugby match anyone can join, or different speaker series workshops that are almost like TED talks, or a camp offering free clothing, or…and on and on it goes. Literally, if you can think of it, it exists. From the more “out there” like the infamous Orgy Dome, to something benign like a honey wine tasting. Just such a whimsical place, and it’s impossible to feel cynical like it is so easy to do in “the real world”. One of my favorite burner stories that I heard this year, from a dude in his 60s, was that in 2019, he was biking around deep playa and gets hassled by a lady in a loudspeaker, so he naturally walks over. She then invites him to take the last seat in a pop up table for 6, and these 6 strangers are subsequently served a delicious 4 course Italian meal with legitimately fantastic wine to boot. And this is in deep playa, like a 20+ minute bike ride from Black ROck City itself. Just an unparalleled place that really brings out the best in humanity.
So anyways. This year I did a full 180 as I didn’t want to be caught “chasing the magic” of my first burn and then get subsequently disappointed. In hindsight I think every Burn would be equally magical, but obviously don’t regret a thing from this year. This was especially because my last camp was just so amazing. So I solo camped and had no bike. My solo camping area was in an area called HOVerlandia, just outside the bus depot on the outskirts of the city. The Burning Man organization actually built a giant shade structure for HOVerlandia, as a part of their concentrated push to encourage bus usage (only bus riders can camp here, bus riders can purchase water on playa and use their own collapsable jugs to refill, bus riders are given a garbage bag that they can get rid of on playa as opposed to taking it back home, and the bus bypasses all traffic coming in and out of the event). Because of the shade structure, a sort of impromptu camp atmosphere sprung up. I wouldn’t say that I was *as* close with people here as I was in my actual camp in 2019, but there were definitely some cool cats who I hit it off with more.
Having no bike in a city that is something like 7 square miles in the scorching desert environment was certainly a character building exercise. But the beauty of no bike was that I was constantly stopping while walking to interact with various camps and people. One of my favorite ones for this was a bar nearby called Swiss Space Bar, run by a bunch of people from Switzerland, with some token Americans as well. I visited four times over the course of the week and all four were great interactions. In one, an older dude from Florida (most of my interactions this burn were with older folk I feel) suggested that my playa name be Lotus, since that’s what my name means in Sanskrit. The fact that I didn’t immediately hate it surprised me, since I had been suggested a few different ones last burn and none even remotely resonated with me. He was also an urban planner, and was talking about how smartly designed Black Rock City was, which to me was validating as I always felt like the city design intuitively made sense. For reference, Black Rock City literally only exists for this one week, and otherwise the playa is just a giant desert landscape that is federal land. The best one though, was when I met a handful of people from a camp called Children of Chaos. They were all roughly my parents’ age, including one dude who was an Indian doctor (“only” in his 40s), also ethnically from Tamil Nadu, and originally born in Syosset, Long Island, which is like a 30 minute drive east of my childhood home. There was a couple there who were engineers who had done like an engineers without borders thing, and had spent a decade living in Nigeria and Indonesia. We bonded over our love of subsaharan African wildlife and scuba diving, and they invited me to a talk that their camp was hosting that was given by Stewart Harvey, who is the brother of Larry Harvey, the dude who literally founded Burning Man in 1986 when he invited a bunch of buddies to burn an effigy of a man on Baker Beach in SF. Larry passed away in the spring of 2019, and Stewart’s talk was basically about the organic evolution of Burning Man from this small, friendly get together into this giant cultural institution, and it was honestly incredibly fascinating to me. Afterwards, I got to talk for a bit with him and also his son (and Larry’s nephew), who had been going since the OG burns when he was in college. Pretty much everyone at this camp was like a 25+ year burner, so for me it was just so cool to soak up all their stories and learn more about the chaotic past of this wonderful event. Being the ageist that I am, I assumed it would be a light night after this talk because almost all of these guys and girls were like 50+ years old. So of course, this naturally wound up being my only all-nighter of the event, and it was such a fun time. One of the guys also gifted me this super cool pin that they used for their camp – the design was just so incredibly badass. By the way – gifting is a vital part of Burning Man, from camps giving away food and alcohol to individuals giving away small trinkets and drugs…everything is free once you step foot on playa.
Other highlights in terms of stuff I saw – of course, the legendary Thunderdome, which is arguably the second/third most famous Burning Man “institution” after the Orgy Dome and maybe El Pulpo Mechanico. Thunderdome has been around since 1999, and is basically this giant, caged dome. Onlookers can climb up and hang along the cage, yelling, cheering, and rattling the dome from above. In the dome, you have two contestants who are sat in these massive swings hung from the top, armed with foam batons, and they just beat the shit out of each other while swinging back and forth. The camp that runs this dresses up in all black and death metal style, and this really adds to the whole surreal Mad Max atmosphere of this one place. I also saw the Samskara IMAX show again. It was quite literally identical to 2019 which was a little disappointing, but still a very cool experience. It’s just this super trippy IMAX show with visuals of Hindu Mythology matched with new-age remixes of Hindu chants. Speaking of IMAX…in addition to the staggering creativity that is on display at Burning Man, the engineering feats are arguably even more stunning. This is an unforgiving environment, and for groups to just come up and built this shit is mind-boggling. It really is a humbling experience since I am just me while you have all these uber talented people in attendance.
Other highlights (there’s a lot more coming)…walking around at 8am after my morning shit and seeing a piano lofted 20 feet in the air, only accessible via a rope ladder, and some girl sitting there and playing just for herself since I was literally the only person awake and in that street area. The party hosted at this massive pyramid (literally a pyramid) the night of the man burn, where (as a non EDM fan) there was just this wonderful EDM beat that was so relaxing and yet invigorating, with a super eclectic crowd in there as well. Obviously the man burn itself, which was just as fantastic as 2019 was. The morning after the man burn, from like 7-9am, the Orgy Dome camp threw a massive BBQ party using the embers of the man to cook full pig and lamb roasts, delicious cuts of steak, fantastic soups, you name it. Running into a girl who had the exact same tattoo of the Black Rock City map that I have on my left pec, on her right forearm. And her first burn was also in 2019 and she got it soon after that. There was this very cool, large white dome out in deep playa that you could climb up, and just lie on nets and relax to ambient wildlife music and a very majestic church chanting music. And speaking of majestic music, a top 5 highlight for me was schlepping all the way to deep playa from my camp (easily a few hours of walking, including all the stops to see cool art), and hearing in the distance this absolutely gorgeous EDM dream/trance like remix of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb. There was an art car that was throwing a sunrise DJ set. I naturally wandered there on my own and just had a beautiful time listening to very relaxing dream-like electro beats.
Let’s see, other ones…the general difference in the city between night and day. Night is like a stimulation overload with everyone lit up and all the crazy art cars driving around (the Pacman cars made a repeat appearance after 2019! One car as pacman, a few cars as pacman ghosts, and they sometimes recreate the chase). Honestly, just walking around smiling. Burning Man is the only thing I have ever done in my life where I constantly reminisce about it (in a good way), so it was so surreal to finally be back. My cheeks legit were in pain from all my smiling the first few days. Speaking of which…I once again did shed some tears while leaving, though I definitely remember crying more in 2019 than I did this year. Discovering the magic of the old school burner camps was also a highlight. Many of these camps have nondescript entrances/decorations, but they are all manned by 15+ year veterans who all have the coolest stories, and their camps generally serve both the strongest and most delicious drinks. There was a camp near mine that had this super super cool VR headset setup. You basically get to recreate prior burn footage (they worked with the organization to access archival footage), and it’s legit like a full 360 view. I spoke with the camp leads and they said that they often find it impossible to explain Burning Man to outsiders (and I fully agree), so their intent with this was to create something that can help recreate the experience for people in the real world. And honestly, I fully buy it…this was just wonderfully fantastic. What else…oh, discovering BMIR, the radio channel, was very cool. It honestly reminded me a toooon of the radio in the GTA games, where it just sounds so outrageously fake, but of course, it was “real” as it was all about the happenings of Burning Man, complete with ads that camps would use to advertise their events. On one of my first nights, I was out with some of the HOVerlandia solo campers and we saw this cool circus wheel setup where you ride these cloth hangings and swing around in a circle. I naturally fell and was eating dust for a full rotation while hanging on by my left arm. Got a nasty bruise that has since cleared up, and in hindsight it could have been a lot worse, but hey, live and let live. There were 1000s of drones that would perform shows at night in the air, simulating everything from random faces to the man himself. I met a late 20s married couple where the wife’s parents and 80+ year old grandpa were also in attendance, and their goal was to have their 2 year old child come in a couple of years for a 4-generation event, if the grandpa is still fit enough to come. And of course, my friend Brian sent me a letter via the post office (yes, you can deliver mail to people on playa) as he was attending a couple of weddings and couldn’t go this year. The letter was peak Burning Man, as he sent me on some outrageous quest to deliver a random playa gift to the first person that fulfilled certain requirements after completing the quest. Definitely an unexpected surprise. And I heard this obscure song called “Rambling Man” by Lemon Jelly (not the Allman Brothers classic) that my 2019 tent-mate Nick showed me while in Bali in March 2020, so it was crazy to hear that here since Nick sadly couldn’t make it due to a wedding (that, to be fair, I chose to skip for Burning Man instead).
Speaking of friends…I hung out with Greg a couple of times too. We literally have only met like 4 times in life…Burning Man 2019, then I went to Pinnacles National Park with him in July 2020, he flew out and met me, Brian, and Nick for Rocky Mountain National Park on labor day weekend 2020 (where we did our own impromptu man “burn” with glowsticks as the event was cancelled that year), and then this year’s Burning Man. And yet, I can confidently say he is one of my closer friends, which is crazy. But yea, he was in a gnome themed camp this year and they threw an event, so I went for that. Super fun and his camp mates were also legit. In general, it’s impossible to meet people if their camp doesn’t have a scheduled event because of how chaotic and unstructured the entire week is. But that said, I literally ran into him on randomly a few days later, which is just a part of the playa magic. I also ran into two other strangers on multiple occasions. One of them was a girl who wore a leopard skinned pill box hat (cue Bob Dylan), and on the second time, she just walked up to me and said “Hey you’re the walker from New York”. I just found it hilarious that me walking around playa was a memorable trait – which, to be fair, given this year’s heat I guess it was. I also hung out with AJ, who was my friend Brent’s friend (unfortunately did not see Brent or Jenny from my 2019 camp this year…walked by their camps but they weren’t throwing scheduled events so it was tough). It was AJ’s first burn – I met him at a party Brent hosted the night after 2019 ended while I was in SF, and literally only met him one other time at a party in 2020 in SF, but we’ve stayed in touch and got along. But yea, he used to be a cook so they had this delicious steak dinner at his camp that they were nice enough to invite me to. I also got by far the drunkest I did all week that night with AJ and his friends, and then stumbled back to my camp *in the midst* of a crazy whiteout storm. I literally got lost too many times to count and what should have been a 1 hour walk took 3 hours because of that. Granted the alcohol didn’t help, but from talking to other people it seemed like everyone was getting lost that night. You’d be surprised at just how hard it is to walk in a straight line with zero visibility…reminds me of the blindfolded walking straight experiment I did in the salt flats in Bolivia, where we were all walking in circles. Before I had gotten too drunk, we were hanging out at some 80s dance party event (any event that isn’t EDM is a welcome refresh to me as 95% of playa music is EDM) and there were multiple families there! I always absolutely love seeing little kids at the burn, so it was just amazing to see that.
This event is just so so wonderful. And it is outrageously massive. I maybe only experienced 5-10% of the event, whether it is camps or artwork, and that is pushing it. But that is the beauty of the event, where everyone experiences their own unique burn because of how massive it is. Honestly just so glad to have gone again, and I am counting down the days until 2025…will be missing the next two burns for grad school and am going to try my hardest to have my post grad job start after Labor Day.
After Burning Man, I spent another day decompressing at my cousin’s before flying back to NY. Had a belated birthday dinner for my sister at this swanky Indian restaurant called Dhamaka and otherwise caught up with some friends, before flying back to the motherland on Sep 12. Plan is to spend a few days with my grandma before starting a weeklong trek in Kashmir, and then directly going to Himachal Pradesh to meet my dad and aunt for a road trip across a barren region called the Spiti Valley, which should hopefully be VERY similar to Ladakh both geographically and culturally…Spiti literally means “the land between”, and it refers to the land between India and Tibet (aka Ladakh, the southern tip of the Tibetan Plateau). Planning on another week-long trek in the Himalayan state of of Uttrakhand after that, and then hopefully my Afghanistan roadtrip!