Nowhere near as exciting as Burning Man. But I was at Reading '05 in the UK. The year of the Reading camping riots. It was insane. All out debauched celebration alongside morons being in charge of camping equipment whilst inebriated. This amounted to gas canisters and fireworks placed casually on the tops of campfires, leading to one guy having his balls shredded by shrapnel as he walked too close to one of the pires.

I witnessed a few walking wounded, stumbling to make their way to medical help, dripping with blood, being hindered by the utter chaos that filled the 'roads' between campsites. People were clinging to the sides of fire engines as they tried to wade through the drunken zombies, a group pushed an ice cream truck over with the operator still inside and the marshals all got trapped in their crows nests and pelted with all sorts of projectiles (including flaming) whilst people set their tents and remaining equipment on fire below instead of having to clean them up and cart them home.

I've never been in a situation like it. Utterly surreal, super scary but also kinda dumb fun at the time when you're 17... I can remember the festival being quite good before all hell broke loose on the last night!