Coachella campers are turning tents fancy - and not all Brits are happy

For anyone who has experienced the chaos of a British festival campsite, videos coming from Coachella could certainly raise eyebrows.

Some of those attending the much talked about festival, which takes place over two weekends each year in Palm Springs, California, are ditching hastily assembled pop-up tents and crumpled gazebos.

Instead, they're driving cars onto the campsite and creating an elaborate tent behind the car - with full-size beds, dressing rooms and even their own showers.

Car camping itself is nothing new, but the OTT way some Coachella campers are doing it this year is sparking conversation online.

It's even been labelled "performative camping" - where you make your pitch as fancy as possible and film it for social media clout.

Ali Calder's TikTok videos of her Coachella camp racked up millions of views last weekend.

"I got a three inch memory foam mattress pad so it felt just like my bed at home," Ali says. "For the tent itself I [built] walls and my decorations were super fun."

She also put up LED lights and brought her own shower and a cooler, which she "filled with drinks and snacks like hummus and salsa".

There was even a disco ball, an electric fan, a selection of blankets and a furry rug to complete the set-up.

The 31-year-old from Arizona, who is attending Coachella for the fifth time, tells me "half the fun" of car camping is "all the decorating and having a cool place to come back to".

There are several different accommodation options, similar to those offered at British festivals.

These include standard camping where you bring your own tent, and glamping which involves staying in more expensive pre-erected tents and cabins. This year, Coachella says car camping is its "most popular overnight option".

Ali says the cost to camp from Thursday to Monday was $500 (£370) - which included upgrading to a plot closest to the festival stages - and general admission tickets cost about $600 (£443) for all three days.

Many of Coachella's celebrity guests choose to stay away from the festival site, in hotels and rented properties, mirroring behaviour at UK festivals like Glastonbury.

Ali's TikTok video, which she says she posted "just for the memories", quickly attracted the attention of Brits.

"I couldn't stop laughing [at the comments] because obviously my setup was the ultimate girly glamping experience and people were sending me pictures of a chair in mud with a tent next to it," she jokes.

"No-one's really hating on [my set-up] and I mean each to their own. If that's your vibe, to just have a pop-up tent, then all power to you," she adds.

Other videos from last weekend's festival (Coachella runs near-identical line-ups two weekends in a row) show inflatable sofas, fairy lights and makeshift kitchens.

These, too, have attracted the attention of British festival goers who are more used to dragging their wellies through mud and torrential rain, with elaborate car camping seemingly not as popular - yet, anyway - in the UK.

Some of those we spoke to described a friendly and safe atmosphere among car campers, with people happy to share items with strangers who had lost something. That helped reassure some their belongings wouldn't get stolen when they headed away from camp to see performances.

Ali's not the only Coachella car camper to push back at the idea their set-ups are performative.

Khadijah Brown, who flew to the festival from Texas, insists her set-up with her friends, which included four cars and four tents, was necessary to withstand challenging weather conditions at the festival.

"The reality of camping is that it's a truly out of body experience," the 25-year-old says. "It is nasty, gross and unorganised - no matter how well you plan for it."

"Last year it was so hot that you were putting on your make-up and it was dripping off, and this year we had crazy wind storms so our tents ended up blowing into other people's areas."

Extreme weather at British festivals often makes headlines, such as Download getting flooded or Boomtown attendees being warned about extreme heat. Temperatures at Coachella have exceeded 30C (86F), with 25mph (40kmph) winds at night.

"The dust was extremely bad," Khadijah, who has been to the festival three times, says, "and we were sleeping in bandanas so we weren't breathing the dust in."

She says some online critics were questioning why she made such an effort to car camp, but "it is something me and my friends view as worth it in order to have the experience of Coachella".

She also wants people to remember that the cost of attending a festival like Coachella is high and "everyone has different financial restrictions" in her friendship group for where they can stay, so they wanted to find a happy medium.

"We've done hotels before and the shuttles can take up to two to three hours and when you're spending upwards of $1000 (£738) to be at a music festival, you want to make sure you can see the artists you are there for."

"We would do it ten times over again," she says of her and her friends.

"Coachella truly is the festival of all festivals - there is nothing like it."