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

Buzludzha is a historical peak in the Central Stara Planina, Bulgaria and is 1441 metres high. In 1868 it was the place of the final battle between Bulgarian rebels led by Hadji Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha and the Ottoman Empire. The Buzludzha Monument on the peak was built by the Bulgarian communist regime to commemorate the events in 1891 when the socialists led by Dimitar Blagoev assembled secretly in the area to form an organised socialist movement with the founding of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party, a fore-runner of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The Monument was opened in 1981. No longer maintained by the Bulgarian government, it has fallen into disuse. Buzludzha is reached by a 12 km side road from the Shipka Pass.

Zarnala is a female illustrator with a knack for anthropomorphic illustration, combining human and animal elements to create something altogether new. Unlike other forms of anthropomorphic art one can find out there though, her work always retains a tasteful, professional edge similar to the feel I get from comics like Juanjo Garnido's take on Blacksad. With an awesome watercolor themed approach to all her illustration work and her use of graphic shapes to frame her characters, at times it gives her art a strangely retro look that reminds one of the works of Norman Rockwell and JC Leyendecker. Check out more of her work after the break!

“Alan Alexander “A. A.” Milne (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English author. Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals, most notably the bear named Winnie-the-Pooh”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A rare American first edition of a Winnie-the-Pooh book signed by the author A.A. Milne and illustrator E. H. Shephard is displayed with Pooh characters form a 1930's game at a press preview at Sotheby's Auctioneers on December 15, 2008 in London. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Beachgoers are hit by a wave in La Libertad May 3, 2015. El Salvador emergency authorities declared a green alert along the pacific coats due to a large swell that affected the Salvadoran coast and originated from the extra-tropical storms that formed in New Zealand and the Southern hemisphere, according to El Salvador's ministry of environment and natural resources. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

A massive positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike hits in Coolidge, Arizona, 31 August 2016. Thousands of rain drops merge to form mammoth travelling sheets of water in these breathtaking monsoons. Veteran storm chaser and photographer Mike Olbinski captured the stunning beauty of monsoons in timelapses and stills while chasing storm systems across America. (Photo by Mike Olbinski/Barcroft Images)

Ultra-Orthodox Jews dance next to a bonfire during celebrations for the Jewish holiday of Lag Ba-Omer in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighbourhood May 25, 2016. This day marks the hillula (celebration, interpreted by some as anniversary of death) of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a Mishnaic sage and leading disciple of Rabbi Akiva in the 2nd century, and the day on which he revealed the deepest secrets of kabbalah in the form of the Zohar (Book of Splendor), a landmark text of Jewish mysticism. (Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)