>At night you don’t see the tents, the tarps, the dirt; the whole of Burning Man resolves into a jewelled ribbon of lights and colour around you on all sides, studded with lasers and fireballs. Everyone else walking around is strung with colourful blinking lights; packs of cyclists with fairy lights spinning in their wheels, moving like shoals of luminescent fish. Cars and vans trundle around here essentially at random, made up to look like giant glowing worms, or deep-sea anglers, or spaceships, or colossal mining machines.

I've been going to TTITD for 15 years now; that sight is the magic that keeps me coming back.