Every year, participants in the Burning Man Festival descend on the playa of Nevada's Black Rock Desert to form a temporary city – a self-reliant community populated by performers, artists, free spirits, and more. Last week, an estimated 68,000 people came to Burning Man 2013 from all over the world to dance, express themselves, and take in the spectacle. Gathered below are some of the sights from the festival, which lasted a week and came to its conclusion yesterday

A monkey licks ice during the annual “monkey buffet” in Lopburi province, some 150 kms north of Bangkok on November 24, 2013. More than 2,000 kilos of fruits and vegetables were offered to the monkeys during the annual festival to help promote tourism in the area. (Photo by Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP Photo)

A cultural dance group waits to perform at Gambela stadium during Ethiopia's Nations and Nationalities Festival in Gambela town, in Ethiopia December 8, 2015. Picture taken December 8, 2015. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

Women balance on a “mikoshi” or portable shrine as people carry it into the sea during a festival to wish for calm waters in the ocean and good fortune in the new year in Oiso, Kanagawa prefecture, west of Tokyo, Japan, January 1, 2016. (Photo by Yuya Shino/Reuters)

In this photo taken on April 14, 2022, people visit the Light Festival to celebrate the 110th birth anniversary of late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. (Photo by Kim Won Jin/AFP Photo)

Maggie Estby, of Champlin, Minn., high-fives her bulldog Bam Bam after the pooch was crowned the winner of the annual Drake Relays Beautiful Bulldog Contest, Monday, April 25, 2022, in Des Moines, Iowa. The pageant kicks off the Drake Relays festivities at Drake University where a bulldog is the mascot. (Photo by Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

Rwandan woman drummers perform during the photocall for “The Book of Life” at the Edinburgh International Festival on August 11, 2022 in Edinburgh, Scotland.The Women Drummers of Rwanda,have broken with tradition to empower women to take part in a exhilarating and liberating of musical art-form. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

A woman carries an idol of Hindu god Ganesh to her home on the first day of the ten-day-long Ganesh Chaturthi festival, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Mumbai, India on August 22, 2020. (Photo by Hemanshi Kamani/Reuters)