How much will it cost to go to Burning Man from the UK?

Cost of Burning Man
One of the main things that puts people off making the trip to Burning Man from Europe (or the UK) is the cost. It can be really expensive, and we were really unsure as to how much it would be as well - even in retrospect, it was pretty easy to lose track of it. Yes, it will probably cost a lot of money. After adding all this up below, it looks like per person, splitting a car between 4 people in 2011 was £1500.  
Lucas, who was kind of admin-organiser of a lot of the tricky stuff went through his receipts and bills and came up with a really nice breakdown of the costs below, so hopefully this will be informative for people out there who are wondering!

Here’s a list of what we actually paid per person for everything to get to Burning Man 2011 with a group of four people. Some of this is individual items, some of it shared between me and my girlfriend and some of it was four all four of us, but I’ve divided all the cost to make it all per person.


If you’re with a smaller group some of these things might cost a little more because you can’t share things as easily. So, here we go:

• The ticket - £135 That’s what we paid last year as we got in Tier 1 which cost $205, but this year it’ll be more. With the different price tiers and the lottery system we’re not sure what it’ll be, but I will assume we might well end up in tier 2 and pay $320/£205 this time.
• Flights - £600 - We booked in January, right after we booked the Burning Man tickets, and went for direct flights from LHR to SFO with BA. It was possible to go down to £500 if we didn't mind changing planes in Dallas/Chicago/somewhere else, but it would've meant a 4 hour layover each way as well. We went for convenience here. Instead of SFO you can also fly to Reno's airport, which means a change in Dallas/Chicago/Seattle, but less driving as Reno is only 3 hours from Burning Man, San Francisco 7h30 or so,
• Car £140 We went with FOX Rent a Car, who were considered to  be burner friendly. The queue at SFO was huge and it took us an hour and a half before we got the paperwork done, then another half hour before we got the actual car. We went for a Minivan and got a Dodge Grand Caravan, which was absolutely massive and had enough space for all me and Nancy’s things and two bikes, with space left over, and quite a bit of other people’s though we only ever had three people total in it.  The car was £480 or £120 each.
• Car insurance £16 We went with iCarhireinsurance.com and paid £65 for a year long policy that covers Europe, the US, Canada and probably some more countries. Check price comparison website and make sure it includes the US, because many of them don't!
• Petrol £20 This was surprisingly little, really.  We chose to deliver the car back empty, and stopped once in Fernley, when leaving the main motorway i80 and taking the state route to Wadsworth. Then just once on the way back somewhere just west of Reno to top it up a little. In total we spent about £80 on fuel, so £20 each.
• Reno Hotels - £47 We spent 2 nights in Reno, Sunday>Monday beforehand and Monday>Tuesday afterwards. The night beforehand was at the ElDorado and cost us £38 for our double room, the night after at the very good Atlantis hotel for £55 per room. The buffet at the Atlantis afterwards was the best thing ever after spending so much time living on noodles, nuts and raisins.
• Food in Reno - £40 Something like that, for 2 buffets as decribed above.
• Supermarket - £125 We made sure to find out where to find a Walmart  along the motorway that wasn't too close to a big city, and made sure that it was one that sold food as well (not all of them do!). We spent $393/£250 at the Walmart in Dixon, CA on the way in for all our food, water, booze and so many other things. Nancy has already done a big post on what to get so I'll just refer you to that. Things are generally a lot cheaper than they are back in the UK. We didn't buy anything over 20 dollars, which is what of the bottles of liquor cost. Beer seems to be about a dollar a bottle. A gallon of water was 75 cents, of which we bought 9 per person.
• Home Depot - £85 This was at the Home Depot in Vacaville, CA, along i80 again and very close to the Walmart. We spent hours in here, mostly because we were pretty disorganised and had loads of people not really sure what to buy. We just sort or split everything we had and bought a few of our own things. The cost came down to $271 / £170 for a big tarp to use as a shade structure, poles to attach it to (which we didn't use as we managed to build a better construction), rebar for the tents, solar lights to pitch around the tent, flashlights and headlights which were incredibly useful, a cooler, batteries, ropes, tools etc.
• Travel insurance - £17 We used MoneySupermarket for this and paid £34 between the two of us for a Travel Insurance policy that covers the US.
• Clothes etc. - £200 This is completely up to you and depends on how much you want to spend, and how much you already have. We bought a number of new clothes and costumes here before we left, got a few things (like EL Wire) ordered to a friend of ours in the US and bought a bunch of stuff in San Francisco as well. It obviously depends on what you already have as well. I bought a number of shirts, goggles, sunglasses, 4 strings of EL Wire I think, a hate a warm coat, some camo shorts, a cheap watch and a bunch of other stuff for maybe £200 in total.
• Bikes £25 Absolutely not necessary but we reserved two old bikes in Reno for $40 each and they were a great way to get around.
• Total £1450 So that's about £1500 then, and I'm sure we could've saved money on a number of things. This year will probably be a similar amount – we’ll spend a bit more on tickets but there’s a lot of gear that we bought last year that we can re-use. Book your hotels, flights and car as early as you can to get the best deal. It's quite a lot of money obviously but it's totally worth it. :)