It’s hard to gauge how well (the) Glastonbury (Festival) is known outside the UK, as…well, because I’m in the UK. You should know it, because it is the largest music and performing arts festival in the world [source]. Aside from this one line, it’s pretty hard to describe as it tends to be different for each of the 180,000 that attend. For five days a collection of fields in South West England becomes the second biggest city in the county of Somerset. In recent years heavy rainfall has given the festival a reputation as a mudbath, but 2008 saw only a light sprinkle.

Headline acts this year were Jay-Z, Amy Winehouse, Manu Chao, The Verve, Leonard Cohen and Massive Attack but something like 2000 acts perform over 35 stages. The festival has its roots firmly in the hippie and New Age culture, first held in 1970. The location itself is a place of interest for Druids and the larger area of the Vale of Avalon is overlooked by a mighty rocky outcrop. Hence much of the festival retains the hippie vibe and you’re never far from a bindi, despite a recent influx of professional middle-class 30-somethings.

To walk on the hippie side, one destination is the Stone Circle, where whacked out ravers and hippies light fires, beat drums and watch the sun rise. It’s also a favourite spot to score the narcotic of your choice - police take a fairly laid-back attitude to drugs, use of which is widespread. [Ultrabrown says no kids, and so should you. Except for bhang which makes you strong]

With hippies underfoot, one might not find it surprising that ISKCON has been in attendance at Glasto for over a decade. There has been a Hare Krishna tent offering free food for years and it is always fairly busy. The friendly staff handle often huge queues and ensure they perform a twice daily procession around a small portion of the monumentally large site. I was particularly impressed with the tent this year, they had a real Indian. Here’s a video of a Hindu tent-raising, subsequent clapping, poorly executed bharatanatyam and mud at last year’s festival. A veritable mish-mash.

Flags of a free Tibet were popular, but nowhere near as prevalent as at Radiohead’s gig I attended just prior to Glasto where the stage itself sported at least three large Tibetan flags.

Chai stalls are becoming more numerous and one had A1 tip-top quality masala chai complete with earthen cup. I noticed a curry stand this year, although it was staffed by three young Polish ladies. Of course I didn’t try it, what do you take me for? I went for the Chinese food cooked by Czechs, far more authentic.

Ganpatis were easy to spot, multi-trunked elephants too.

Performers came from around the world, with every continent represented well, except those lazy Antarcticans.

But in terms of less traditional Asian performances, there were fewer than in previous years. In 2005, when Indian music was hot in the UK (so fickle), acts from both the UK and India such as Pentagram, Swami, Kissmet, Yam Boy and a new girl called MIA enjoyed good slots. This year experienced Glasto pros like Shiva Soundsystem (below, first pic) and Pathaan were back, along with the New Yorker-Mumbaikar Shaa’ir & Func (second pic; both courtesy Kunal Anand), who are currently hitting up the UK.

Somewhat incongruously, alongside all these funky brown drum and bass heads, one could find a London-based Bollywood dance troupe teaching people in wellies at the Salsa tent. Don’t ask, I don’t know. It might not look like much, but below is PRIME real estate at the top of a hill (less chance of being caught in a flood), far from the toilets (they do begin to smell) and we even had a gazebo. The monster tent at the top was my home for five days.

Some training from the Desh came in very handy indeed. Toilets are either pissers (urinals - nice and clean), portaloos (satanic plastic boxes which produce more noxious gas than a small nation) and the imaginatively named ‘long drops’, which are cubicles consisting of a hole over a huge septic tank. As my foolish, foolish friends laid toilet paper carefully over unspeakable seats or attempted to hold everything in for five days, I squatted happily and read my programme.

(Owing to foresight that I would not be in any state to handle expensive equipment (proved correct) and the fact we haven’t really got to know each other yet, most photos above are not my own; click the pic for the parent flickr set.)