So I skipped saturday...there wasn’t much in the way of pictures taken.  Saturday was the design workshop, put on by yours truly, we had 25 people sign up, teachers and students, and we learned about design, adobe illustrator, and music by creating album art for random bands.  It went really well, with everyone participating and learning more about Illustrator in a few hours than most do in a semester.  It went all day, and afterwords I went back to the bazaar to pick up a few more things, then to dinner with another teacher, Martin, and his family.

 

Sunday, however, was full of adventure AND pictures.  To make the most of the day I woke up early, and Andrew and I took a car to the Gateway of India so we could catch a ferry to Elephanta island.  Named by the Portuguese for the big stone elephant statue they found, the island is home to the famous “Cave Temples” - an entire temple carved from and inside the solid rock.  Supremely impressive, the temple is full of statues, carvings, columns, and the centerpiece, a gigantic triple head featuring Krishna (the creator), Shiva (the protector), and Vishnu (the destroyer).  Sadly, the Portuguese explorers used most of the statues as target practice and destroyed most of them...still, one can get a small sense of how amazing the pristine temple must have been.

 

Also on the island - Monkeys!  Wild monkeys ran the island and while not dangerous, were pretty good at getting your food.  My favorite trick - they’d get on their hind legs and run after school girls...making them scream and throw their snacks up in the air.  They were pretty big, big enough that we decided not to tempt them with snacks of our own.

 

Elephanta was a peaceful place...strangely quiet when compared to the constant din of Bombay - always honking, shouting, blaring music...you almost don’t realize how noisy it really is until you get away from it..say to an island.