19 July 2026
Since leaving home for the second time last October, I’ve been on this epic adventure of travelling to new places and meeting new people. I have discovered far more than I ever could have hoped for and met some truly incredible people. One thing, though, I still haven’t found…
…a festival quite like the ones we have back home.
Granted, I still haven’t been to Europe, and of course there are countless incredible psy-trance and EDM festivals around the world. But back in South Africa, we are truly spoiled. The DJs, the community, the freedom to camp together for an entire weekend… those are things I will never take for granted ever again. The sense of belonging I found over the last few years after discovering the “hippie crowd” and the festie community is something I simply haven’t found anywhere else. Not even in Goa, the birthplace of psy-trance, where I found mostly empty sounds and fleeting conversations.
So when I stumbled across an advert for a psy-trance festival here in Georgia, I was beyond excited.
Georgia may not be the first country that comes to mind when you think of free-spirited festival culture, but I’d heard there was a much bigger alternative scene in Tbilisi. Surely there would also be more travellers passing through who shared the same love for festivals. I didn’t need to think about it much before buying my early-bird ticket. Excitedly, I started planning the weekend with a few new friends I’d made at the hostel. Glitter was bought. Neon hairpieces found their way into my bags. And, of course, outfits were planned in meticulous detail because of course, dressing up is almost more fun than dancing for three days.
I knew it probably wouldn’t be exactly like the festivals I was used to, but I expected at least a fun weekend of dancing and connecting with like-minded people.
Deep down, I also sensed that this weekend would answer another question. Would I move to Tbilisi and stay in Georgia… or was it finally time to move on? That uncertainty had been quietly sitting in the back of my mind for weeks.
Arriving in Tbilisi on Friday afternoon, I could barely stop smiling. I’d missed dancing and music far more than I’d admitted to myself. The festival was advertised to begin at 7pm on Friday evening. Knowing that that was probably a bit too early to expect any Georgians to be out dancing, we arrived at around 8:30pm, dressed up and more than ready to boogie. Our excitement lasted approximately thirty seconds. There wasn’t a sound coming from the venue. After scanning our tickets and collecting our wristbands, we wandered toward the main stage and found…
…silence. Not a DJ in sight. No dancing. No food stalls. No colourful decorations. Nothing except the stretch tent and the stage itself. I simply stopped and laughed. What else was there to do? We had clearly underestimated Georgian festival organisers. Slowly, a few people drifted in. Around 9pm, the first DJ finally started her set.
Very little else was happening. A handful of vendors lazily began setting up, but by midnight the place still felt strangely empty. The music had already shifted into very dark, heavy psy-trance. There had been no gradual build-up, no uplifting progressive sets to gently get people dancing. Perhaps our little airy-fairy tribe is simply used to different frequencies. I completely respect that different music speaks to different people. This one simply wasn’t speaking to me.
The second stage wasn’t much better. Instead of chilled house or desert tech, music was playing that neither of us could make sense of. The “spirit floor” and creative space were still closed. We stayed until around 1am and called it a night… It was time to go to sleep and try again the next day.
Saturday, 4pm.
Paying for the 9 GEL Bolt ride (not a cheap taxi ride!), I arrived once again dressed up and optimistic. I wasn’t expecting packed dance floors, but I was genuinely looking forward to some music, along with the advertised sound bath and flute meditation in the chill area. The venue…was silent again. Not a soul moving. The main stage was completely dead. The program had promised forty-eight hours of nonstop international DJs. Following the sound of distant, very loud bass beats, I eventually found the indoor stage barely alive, playing some of the cringiest, darkest psy-trance I’d ever heard.
My soul immediately wanted to hide. It was simply far too loud, far too heavy for a peaceful Saturday afternoon. Like a balloon with a giant hole in it, I felt myself deflating and my excitement disappeared almost instantly. Again, the vendors still hadn’t set up. A few people slept quietly in hammocks beneath the trees. I peeked into the room where the sound bath was supposedly happening and was politely waved away. Apparently, I wasn’t allowed to join the three people already lying on the floor. So I waited.
The flute meditation was due to start in thirty minutes. Or perhaps not. The young woman explained, in broken English, that there might be a Kundalini meditation. Maybe at five. Maybe six. That was enough for me. I was deeply disappointed and couldn’t see the point of waiting around any longer when nobody seemed to know what was happening, or when. Would the festival finally come alive at midnight? After midnight? When everyone normally went clubbing?
Another 9 GEL Bolt ride later, I found myself back at the guesthouse. By then, I honestly wanted my money back. It was now almost 7pm, and the venue still looked almost exactly the same – as could be seen on a video taken and sent to me via Instagram. We eventually decided to skip the rest of the ‘festival’ altogether.
My little sunshine heart was aching.
More than anything, I wanted to be back home beneath the stars, laughing with my happy hippie family, surrounded by the magic that somehow seemed to appear at every single one of our beautiful South African festies.
This was probably also the moment that I quietly realised something else. As beautiful as Georgia has been… As deeply as I have loved this season… It was gently drawing to a close. And perhaps…
…the universe was calling me onward once again.
