About Boom

Boom is a special festival I had heard about several times, and is not easy to get to since it's only once every other year. I found out about boom because of the number of psytrance sets I saw on youtube, and also heard about it as a unique festival that is somewhat burning man like. There is definitely a hippy component to it (and I'm not saying that as in it's a bad thing) and I'm guessing it is based in Portugal as Portugal has decriminalized all drugs from what I understand. I found out later that some good amount of those was probably required to enjoy some of the music ;)

Boom has costumes and outfits, but not so much the LED ones for night, so I didn't find many people lit but, but people did love my outfit, which made bringing it all the way there and dealing with difficult recharging, worth it (yes, sometimes people ask: it was a lot of work to build, maintain, fix, carry, and in this case, also recharge, but obviously this is all to help spread smiles, happiness, and add to the festivals, like everyone else who does the same):

getting to boom if you're not driving yourself is easiest from Lisbon or Madrid. They have busses from airports at both locations, and that's how I got there. At the time, I was not aware that there were 2 other ways to get there, and local busses going to/from Idanha-a-Nova and Castelo Branco, the latter has train service to the rest of portugal. Anyway, took the last train from Lisbon (leaving at 16:00 on the 2nd day). It was a longish and not very comfortable bus ride, but it got us there after 5h-ish hours:

filled busses

alternate options I didn't know about

Arrived by 21:00, still some sunlight

The place is actually pretty large when you're on foot. cardboard village was a good 20mn very uphill walk from the biggest dancing area, and without big wheeled luggage, the rough terrain made dragging luggage up not fun at all:

Most people online said to arrive as early as possible to get a better camping spot, or "not miss any minute', but honestly it's already a 7-8 day festival, even arriving on the 2nd day it was plenty early enough and the main stages had not even opened/started yet, so I personally felt it would have been fine to arrive even one day later, but by then it would have to have been through alternate transportation means like the local bus.

So, now is a good time to mention that Boom is not for the faint hearted. The camping conditions are on the harsh side, I guess not getting rained on is good, but a lot of the terrain, including where I stayed, is slanted, full of very pricky leaves (by that I mean they made holes in my flip flops and would sting my feet), the biggest ants that earth has, and some pretty scary looking spiders that will come in your tent if it's not fully sealed (thankfully I'm pretty sure they aren't poisonous, but waking up next to one is still unnerving somewhat).

very long and painful walk up when you are carrying your camping equipment and luggage

the path to cardboard village is steep, even without luggage

Because this was part of a long EU trip, I elected not to carry around camping gear across Europe just because of boom, and went with the cardboard village which provided recyclable cardboard tents. I'll be honest that they are not big, basically backpacking size, and they fall apart easily (held up by some staples). You could buy or rent camping gear, including tents, but that's a big gamble to come with nothing if they can run out before you arrive:

the door broke instantly, very little room for luggage, and it's not secure, thefts are a problem :(

Each camp had a few bathrooms (not enough), and showers that were only open during limited hours. That created pretty long lines, which in turn discouraged people from using them and I guess encouraged people to take quicker showers maybe? The main point was to save water as the entire area was in a drought:

they were lacking urinals, it would have helped with bathroom lines

Just like burning man, you are encouraged to disconnect during the event, and obviously FB or Instagram usage are heavily discouraged. There is however reasonably good cell signal throughout the event, which is good for syncing up and meeting friends. To recharge though, you have to rely on a few sparse charging points, which is questionable if you have to leave your sole phone there for multiple hours. I recommend bringing a lot of USB battery packs, using them to recharge your devices inside the tent and leaving your battery pack unattended to recharge it. I had bigger issues with my very power hungry LED outfit that needed a lot more power than a phone or battery pack, and was thankfully able to make special arrangements for access to power to recharge those.

The Grounds

Also in burning man fashion, people at Boom were respectful of the environment and super clean. That was quite refreshing compared to too many festivals where people are just pigs and throw trash everywhere :(

a nice lady picking up the little trash on the ground, people were very clean

Just like project Zendo at Burning Man, they had knowledgeable volunteers to help people use drugs safely, including even a way to test them, although demand far exceeded supply for that:

While many things were burning man-like, it was not a gift/barter economy, which honestly was helpful for me or I would have had to bring even more things, including a week's worth of food. There were lots of food options and lines were a bit long but not terrible:

ok, that was both unexpected and very welcome. Just like burning man, Boom is super transparent about their costs

lots of food options

the general store was also useful

very large and shaded dining areas, with a few places to charge phones :)

Nice displays and decors:

They also have a market manned by attendees:

Also some art, not Burning Man levels of art, but still a fair amount:

You can also bathe in the lake:

the pipe is to allow trucks to pump water out and fix the roads

Along with the lake, comes some nature of course:

Like everywhere, watching sunsets was nice:

everyone celebrated in different ways :)

And then, it gets very cool at night:

The People

if you didn't bring your half eaten pickle, you missed out :)

you don't need an outfit if you have a big tatoo ;)

That said, people brought fun things to the dancefloor:

that's one way to get to the stage

and another way :)

people brought an operating table in the crowd ;)

you can also bring your couch ;)

supplies ran low by the end of the week :)

Someone brought a lit up Diabolo, and I mostly remembered how to play it, that was fun :)

The Music

experimental stage indeed

The other 2 stages played a bit of music I liked, but was honestly also a lot of deep dark psytrance that sounded like the same thing and sometimes the same few bars stuck in a CDJ eloop for an hour+. I realize it's not an entirely accurate or fair description, but hopefully makes my point that I had a hard time enjoying most of the music. This was a big disappointment for me when I had only heard a few stellar sets on youtube from some DJs I quite liked, but in the end that was only a quite small portion of the music I heard.
Dance Temple was stellar:

When it got too hot, they had you covered:

Of course, it gets a lot prettier at night

I tried to help with lighting :)

Alchemy Circle, the 2nd big stage was not bad at all either:

It was also pretty at night, nice LED work:

Finally by the last day, my 2 favorite DJs closed the festival, starting with Astrix:

Full set:

And then Liquid Soul finished the night:

Summary Video:

Full set:

Farewell/Conclusion

Definitely had some good times and music I did enjoy across everything there :) (and yes, that 1H mostly has music that I liked, but there was plenty of other music that was harder to listen to for more than few minutes). Pointers:

The line for the busses on the way out was the least fun part of the event

Other thoughts

Should you go? Would I go Back?