Heather: I was expecting the eclipse, and excited to see my first one.  I had agreed to help in the kitchen all day, and had already been working for an hour when someone said to check out the sun around 6:30.  It was pretty cloudy, but they were thin around the sun, and we could see a glowing crescent through the clouds that was getting thinner.  Unfortunately, the clouds rolled in nice and thick at just the wrong moment, and we weren’t able to see anything but one lone star when the sky got dark.  And it was really dark, which was crazy, since it had already been light since 4am.  From the outdoor part of the kitchen, we could hear people from lots of villages below us kickin’ up quite a ruckus.  Ngawang told us that they believe that a dragon is eating the sun, and they are scaring off all the accompanying demons until it is born again.  Pretty cool….  9 photos.

 

This town is a haven for the backpackers who travel India, and for good reason: it’s really cool.  Hampi is nestled in an ancient city that was sacked a very long time ago, yet many of the deserted buildings, palaces, aqueducts, temples, baths, bazaars, elephant stables, and remnants of a much larger, old abandoned, royal city remain.  There are also some amazing giant boulders all around Hampi – a great place to stop and do some climbing: perfect for Heather; perfect for Steve, photographing Heather.  The temples and ruins are built all throughout.  One of the days we were there, we rented motorbikes to further explore the area, and found some really cool “waterfalls.”  The river near the town seems to be lazy and slow, but in one area, the boulders are piled just so the water falls over and around them, and down into the spaces created by them, carving and polishing the rocks in crazy amazing ways.  We were told by the locals that the river is raging during the monsoon, making it impossible to cross.  Sounds like I need to come back someday with my kayak!