Diplo hitchhiked ride out of rain-drenched Burning Man after walking miles ‘through the mud’ and actually made it to his DC concert

By Lauren Mascarenhas and Alli Rosenbloom, CNN

(CNN) — Diplo made it to his concert in Washington, DC, Saturday night with a tale to tell.

After a heavy rainstorm soaked the Burning Man festival, leaving more than 70,000 people stranded, the DJ and producer embarked on a muddy trek through the desert. With the help of some star-studded friends, a kind fan named Tony and some “hippies” with a Sprinter van, Diplo made it to his show.

Festival organizers halted vehicles from traveling in or out of the area after heavy rains started saturated the Black Rock Desert Friday evening, leaving the area filled with ankle-deep mud. Attendees were told to shelter in place and to conserve food, water and fuel.

“The main issue is getting a car out of there is really impossible when it’s muddy, because you’re going to get stuck, and if they have a lot of cars stuck on the playa, it’s going to create huge traffic jams for the eventual exodus of people,” Diplo said Monday on CNN This Morning.

Diplo said he and some celebrity friends, including Chris Rock, Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber and Austin Butler, made the decision to walk out of the area Saturday morning.

“There’s no actual gate to open or close,” he said of the designated festival area. “It’s just the matter of the mud ends and a paved road begins, and that paved road goes to Gerlach, Nevada, and we had a walk to that paved road.”

Fans were delighted to see Chris Rock piled into the truck with Diplo in a video posted to the DJ’s Instagram page Saturday. Diplo said Rock likely got plenty of material from the experience for his next comedy special.

“For sure Chris is going to have a huge bit in his next special about Burning Man, because he was really bizarrely scared of what was going to happen,” Diplo said. “He thought there was going to be cannibalism a day later and didn’t know if people were going to run on our camp and steal our stuff.”

CNN has reached out to representatives for Rock for comment.

Though it wasn’t the annual festival experience attendees were promised, Diplo said he had a good time making his way through the desert.

“It was a challenge, but honestly one of the highlights of the whole trip was getting out there and enjoying the time out there and seeing the desert, walking through the mud and meeting fans.”

One of those fans, Tony, ended up giving Diplo a ride.

“We had a good time in the back of the truck. We rode for about four miles into the city, and we sat in a bar for a while and hung out with people and found a ride to Reno,” he said. “It was like the old times, you know, just caravanning across the country.”

Diplo said he invited Tony to some of his shows.

“Then we found some hippies in the street that had a Sprinter van,” he said, adding his group offered them $1,000 for a ride to the airport.

“We just got in the back of the car, and we just drove for three hours and listened to some Neil Young and just drank some beers,” he said.

Diplo continued to document his journey on his Instagram story Saturday, sharing footage of himself walking barefoot on the tarmac as he boarded what appeared to be his private jet, and later posted a video at the Echostage venue writing, “made it to DC!”

“I somehow made the flight and I made the show. I have no idea how that happened, but then I went to my show in DC and had a great time.”

“I just got done DJing for three hours after walking four hours out of the desert and taking a flight,” he said in another video posted to his Instagram story Sunday morning, adding “mud is still on my face.”

Diplo said he believes the organizers of the festival were very prepared and the experience at the festival wasn’t as some have made it out to be, insisting there was no cannibalism, citing the memes people online were positing throughout the weekend.

“People were making mud sculptures, huge sculptures out of mud and just kind of continuing with their art,” he said. “They might have had to be out there for two extra days, but they had a great time.”

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