Why I'll Always Go Back To Shambhala

$jauz fractal$
Photo Credit: William Selvis

This story started 5 years ago when I went to my first Shambhala. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before and I took the love and feeling back with me. Fast forward 5 years and my friends and I were able to spread that feeling throughout our friend group and convinced them all to come out to this year’s festival and oh what a festival it was.

While fellow RTT writer Sam, his girlfriend Sarah, and I were starting to set up our camp, they almost instantly remarked “this is already my favorite festival we have been to.” This was due to the kind nature and wonderful atmosphere of the people around us. Everyone is so happy to be back on the farm and all everyone wants to do is make sure everyone has the best possible time. We finally got our whole crew in (there were about 15 of us) and we knew the worst part was over.

Photo Credit: Leah Gair

Thursday rolled around and the party got started. Everything got groovy during the afternoon when Skii Tour decided to have the first snowball fight ever at Shambhala. Yeah you read that right, we had a snowball fight in August in the middle of the day. It’s little things like this that help Shambs feel more like a community than a festival and it helps set itself apart from bigger festivals like Electric Forest or EDC. This year the festival limited the amount of tickets sold to 11,000 spread across 6 different stages to help keep this close knit and very intimate feeling between attendees, artists, and workers. Eventually the day wore down and turned tonight where RTT favorites Bleep Bloop and G Jones got the party kicked off right.

The rest of the weekend went by far too fast with amazing sets from Jauz, The Funk Hunters, Worthy, Skrillex, Justin Martin, Stylust Beats, and many many more. The crews made amazing improvements to The Fractal Forest stage as well as The Village Stage that helped open up the dance floor and allow more people to see their amazing stages. This allowed for people to move freely through the crowd and not be crowded to the point where you couldn’t dance. It also allowed for the free flow of people between the stages, which is something I did a lot. With the kind of lineup Shambhala is able to procure, you can walk a couple of minutes to a different stage and see some of the top talent out there in the world. I can’t really put into words how much Shambhala has affect my life personally, but you can ask anyone I know and they will tell you it’s all I ever talk about. Tickets for next years event go on sale on November 2nd so be sure to grab yours and not miss out on anything next year.

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