Emerald Street editor Anna Fielding discovers a festival like no other at Restival, a digital detox in the Moroccan dunes

The five of us are only 15 minutes from camp, but it feels like we’re alone. We’re folded into a dip in the Sahara desert looking up at the Milky Way. Next to me, someone clicks a lighter. The sound is sharp and distinct in the night. It’s only that noise, and a few pairs of fancy trainers, that set us apart from anyone who has sat in this desert and looked up at the stars over the last millennia. “It’s incredible.” “I’ve never seen them like this.” We giggle and pass wine in a water bottle. There are so many stars. The sand, cold on the surface, grows warmer as you dig down. The grains are fine and dry through your fingers.

I’m attending the first Restival, a new wellness festival billed as a digital detox. There’s no fasting, but there’s also no WiFi. Instead there are pens, notebooks, stories, campfires, and group and solitary activities. We are supposed to be switching off for five days and divorcing ourselves from the digital world. It’s a festival that focuses on the inside of your head, aiming for healing not hedonism. It’s for people craving peace.

I was attracted to the idea. The last 12 months were draining, full of last-minute train tickets, hospital visits, funerals, and words that hadn’t been part of my life before, like “oncologist” and “probate”. So the idea of lying down with a book and pen and some mental space appealed to me. Then there was the Sahara. I’d never seen a desert, but I knew desert stories. Deserts were for facing temptation or losing yourself after a broken heart. Deserts were for hallucinations mirages, alien sightings and thirst. I was slightly scared, but that's why I chose to come.

The days when a festival meant a five-day hangover are over: we roadtest a desert-based digital detox