Sundara Karma's guide to Reading

Sundara Karma are from Reading - we may have mentioned it once or twice before, especially around festival season - so who better to give some tips not only for surviving the town’s annual debauchery, but also the rest of the year there too? Pop the kettle on, Dom.

Purple Turtle

It's like the only fucking place that kicks in Reading. It shuts the latest so everyone ends up going there so you get the strangest mixture of people. We've fallen in love at Turtle, thrown up at Turtle, gotten off with milfs at Turtle, even been kneed in the balls at Turtle. We'd recommend this place above anything else in the world.

Oakford Social

Used to be tight! It got redecorated recently and has become this very gentrified gastro burger place for business bankers. It can still be fun though for pre drinks etc. We're unfortunately not allowed to DJ there anymore.

Arcadia Vinyl stores

A great place to find forgotten dust discs. There are two shops, one's more old school and sells little toy trains and cars and old comics, etc. The other place is strictly vinyl. They're both cool and do some absolute bargains.

Oracle Riverside McDonald's

This used to be the chilling spot when we were like 13/14, but we eventually became vegetarians so moved on to better things like Pret and Subway. A sweet spot to be surrounded by concrete and shopping rats and a nice(ish) view of the river.

Dom's House

When we're home and not touring, we like to have movie nights. We all go round to Dom's house cause it's the biggest and he's got the pengest movie set up. Seriously it's like something off fucking Cribs or something that Puff Daddy would own. I think the last movie night we had we watched 'Finding Dora' and consumed an absurd amount of Scooby snacks!

The Space

We rent a little lock up in Reading to keep all our gear in and rehearse in etc. It's part of a Reading charity called Readipop, but we don't feel that gangster calling our rehearsal room Readipop, so we refer to it as 'The Space'. We actually played our first ever show in the same building way back when the place was called Plug n Play, and since then we've played a few shows there; one horrendously foggy Reading Festival afterparty which we try very hard to forget about. There have also been a number of illegal raves here attended to mainly by old bearded folk and white dudes with dreads.

Learning Objective: Reading Festival 2017

Lesson 1 - Know your colours:

Our first Reading was back in 2k11, and local knowledge guided us toward the prime camping spot, Yellow. Yellow is for the legends, Purple for the wannabes, White is miles away and more for families etc., Green is gross, Orange is closest to Tesco's. It's been a few years so the chi might've changed slightly - some people say Yellow is where you camp if you wanna camp with 16-year-olds trying ket for the first time... Maybe your safest bet is Purple or Orange, unless you're 16 in which case most certainly Yellow.

Lesson 2 - Pick your moments:

Everyone ultimately leaves Reading with another batch of debauched stories. The goal of any festival is to make sure that you get through the weekend without someone gramming too much of your shame. A little shame is healthy. But you don't what the internet filing the moment you drank piss out of a wellie or when you did a line off your ex's forehead.

Lesson 3 - Tescos:

The third lesson, perhaps the most important, is to know where Tesco is and all your access points. Tesco becomes the Shangri-La for the grumbly boys and girls. It might be worth mentioning that there are two: one's at the petrol station, and one's the Tesco Extra which is a bit further away and more of a mission, but the perfect place to get a job lot of bananas.

Taken from the June issue of Dork, out now.