travelling tips by Monika Topel

When the first contact appears you can already feel you are about to witness greatness. It seems like an eternal amount of time passes for the second contact to occur, until then, the adrenaline just rises. When the moment comes, it all happens very fast: first the diamond ring and then total darkness. The day has become night in a matter of seconds.
This is a special astronomical phenomenon known as total solar eclipse. These eclipses have awed humans throughout the ages. Up until today, I’ve had the privilege of seeing a total of five. Leading me to believe that chasing total solar eclipses is one perfect way to see the world through others’ eyes.
This takes me back to my fourth eclipse, on August 2008. I was in Xinjiang, China’s most northwestern province. The aim was to see the eclipse the farthest north possible from the city of Hami, in the middle of nowhere. I hired a taxi to drive me there and as we left the city behind, a police patrol stopped us. They retained our ID’s and made us follow them. The driver panicked and cursed all the way to the police station, scaring me and making me wonder what had we done wrong.
As we arrived to the station I could see how I wasn’t the only tourist that committed the same infraction, we were at least 15. We explained the policemen that our intentions had nothing to do with crossing over illegally to Mongolia. They understood and escorted us, without returning our passports, to a field where we could see the eclipse.
From the moment the eclipse started we all had a common cause. The dance between the Sun and the Moon had united us. At this point, understanding that the policemen were only doing their job or that the fear to the authorities of the taxi driver was justified with the existent cultural differences of Xinjiang, was an easy task. By observing everyone’s behavior and reaction to the eclipse, I was able to get a grasp, not only of their personalities, but also on how the world is seen from their eyes.