It’s here! The months of registrations, planning and dreaming have all come together and we have the pleasure of releasing our biggest and most packed Gate Handout yet, just ahead of our imminent date with the desert.

A million thanks to everyone who submitted their info. As you’ll see, there’s a whole lot going on – a whole lot of amazing – and it’s all down to the creativity, industriousness and hard work of the thousands of people that create the magic of Tankwa Town: you. And my, how we have grown! What started out as a sparsely-inhabited and rather humble semi-circle in 2007 has mushroomed into one helluva desert outpost that features lots of camps, loads of artworks and many mutant vehicles that’ll ride on a bunch of new roads.

Want a high-resolution version? Click it.

Getting all this info onto the page has been quite the task. In the process, the job of co-ordinating the city plan has become a major task involving town planning, GPS data, miles of demarcation ribbon (which is what you’ll find marking out the city blocks when you arrive) and a whole lot of signage, CAD, drafts, final drafts, reworked drafts and a whole shitload of physically walking every single block to check and double-check the location of everything down the centimetre.

That’s a hell of a job, in the baking Tankwa heat. So when, at the last minute, your camp or artwork decides to change its size or request a location change, spare a thought for the amount of work that’s gone into bringing the many elements of our Gate Handout to this point. Getting a town this size to fit together to everyone’s satisfaction is no mean feat – so to the hardworking crew that got Tankwa Town mapped out to this degree, we say thank you!

Burn schedule? Theme camps? Artworks? Mutant Vehicles? Performance? It’s all there. Familiarise yourself with your town – get to know the new areas, read up on the many, many amazing artworks and theme camps you’ll stumble upon, identify your neighbours and…get excited. Get very, very excited – because of course the detail here doesn’t compare to experiencing sheer mind-numbing awe that’ll unfold on the ground.

Too small to read the text? Come along, slowpoke, this is the internet not a book – click it, and the hi-res pdf version will be revealed. Download it, rotate it, zoom it and be wowed, zoom out, and be wowed all over again. Yes, there really is so much that it’ll be impossible to see it all – and what you see here is just the stuff that’ registered, and in the spirit of this year’s theme – The Trickster – there’s any number of surprises in store. Take in what you can, while you can, and make the most of your time in Tankwa Town: in just over two week’s time, it’ll disappear for another year.

Want the map in hi-res to print out and stick up in your camp? We aim to please. Here it is – do the click thing to get the large pdf version, download, and you’re good to go:

Want a printout of the Gate Handout? No problem – as always, you can pick up your very own printed version on arrival – at the gate, or at Off-Centre Camp. Stick it in your back pocket, and use it to navigate what your brain can’t comprehend and decipher the things your eyes can’t explain.

Until then, all the best with your preparations. See you soon in the dust, and thank you to every single one of you for the special part you play in making this come to life.

p.s: check out the info at the very bottom of the Burn Schedule – our Decompression is on! See you at Salt River Studios in Cape Town on the 14th of June to reconnect, relive and rekindle. We’ll have an event page set up on Facebook soon for that, keep an eye out.

p.p.s: and hey, if you hadn’t read this year’s Survival Guide yet, there’s still time! Tuck in.