Into the Wild Festival 2022

Last year it was recommended to me that I might enjoy "Into The Wild" - a festival around spirituality, freedom, meditation, healing, yoga and getting in touch with yourself. It was based at a remote location in Surrey.

WARNING: My review is really mixed - that's my personal honest opinion and review of how I found the festival - you might LOVE it or HATE it. For me: It was "okay".

Firstly, I must explain that I am not a seasoned camper - so the whole camping experience was quite a challenge. Thankfully, I went with two friends, one of whom is a fabulous camper and she brought us blow up beds, camping chairs and basically everything we hadn't even considered we might need.

We camped in a field - the facilities were basic - compost toilets - a hole with sawdust! I can't say it was pleasant. We didn't cook, we "ate out" at the various food trucks which were - mediocre. Again "okay" - the write ups and reviews were that there would be a lot of amazing food and many vegan choices etc - in reality, the standard was average. The best thing I ate all weekend was a thali (mixture of Indian food).

So the festival itself - there was a lot on offer though I found it was fairly disorganized - no obvious map, the layout of the activity Teepees etc was not intuitive, the general flow was poor. Although there were hundreds of options and workshops, they were just not very well explained. There were a real mixture of people, hippies with children and people of all ages.

I did enjoy the morning GONG BATH - that was amazing - the unity of people together meditating as the sun started to warm the day - it felt great. I enjoyed a couple of the workshops - The Power of NO - Women's Talk - the 12 step tent and some YOGA. For me there seemed to be a lot of PAGAN influence, which is just not something I am really into. I found that the music was a disappointment: both stages of music were a bit far from the main bunch of food and activity tents and again, it wasn't well advertised what was going on in the main arenas, there were queues to get to them, then when you got there, you had to go down some slopes (decorated with beautiful fairy lights but steep slopes which were difficult to navigate in the dark). On one evening, we made our way down and waited 45 minutes for the main act to get set up and ready, during which time we had had enough, we were getting cold and bored. Another time we ventured to the other arena to find a percussion and chanting type of music happening. As I say - it just wasn't my thing.

There was an underlying secret something going on - talk of a sauna made from a container where bodies (possibly naked) packed up together, late night singing and drumming - it seemed a bit like there was some sort of cult thing going on behind the scenes - talk of being on the land that had ancient meaning going back thousands of years - all kinds of "wierd" stuff.

Although the friends that I was with had some overwhelming spiritual experiences during our weekend - for me - I felt disconnected and quite sceptical. For me, a beautiful venue, great company, but not somewhere I would like to camp again or spend a whole weekend.