I returned to WOMAD after visiting the local festival for the first time last year to find out if it really was as good as I thought it was. 

This year's visit to the long-running Malmesbury event was a little different to last year's. I wasn't able to camp this time so had to travel to and from the festival each day and the glorious sunshine of last year had been replaced by on-and-off rain. 

I will say that not camping there and not being able to spend the full four days emersed in everything WOMAD had to offer did dampen my enjoyment a little bit, certainly moreso than the intermittent rain which wasn't really a factor. 

And that's because WOMAD, perhaps more than any other music festival, is much more about throwing yourself into the experience of the whole thing than simply ticking names off of a live music bucket list and by not camping and living in its world, I was more detached than I was last year. 

Swindon Advertiser:

Not that I'm saying that the music on offer isn't exceptional, with a collection of some of the biggest names and greatest musical talent in the entire world descending on the small Wiltshire town - but I'd wager that the average UK festival goer will not have heard of a majority of the names on the bill - which is the point. 

Sure, there are some familiar names like Bombay Bicycle Club and The Cinematic Orchestra who headlined Friday and Saturday and were both phenomenal in entirely different ways.

But a big part of the joy of WOMAD is to discover and embrace new things. Within the space of a few hours, you could see Mokoomba an African guitar band from Zimbabwe and then Emicida a Brazillian rapper with a growing following in his own country. 

And that's almost what makes WOMAD so interesting and so enjoyable - this deliberate encouragement to discover new things is almost freeing - it doesn't matter where you are or what you are - odds are you'll be discovering something new. 

This is evident with the whole festival that offers unexpected delights at every corner from talks with some of the world's leading scientists, to spoken word poetry slams, to an amazing area where some of the festival's artists cook food for the audience from their home countries. 

There is so much to see and do in the crazy world of WOMAD that the only thing I'm really disappointed about is that I wasn't able to be there more to see and do more of it.