When and where is the next one?

In 1995, whilst watching totality in Balaswar, Rajasthan, with an ancient Moghul fort in my immediate foreground, bats started streaming out of a tower window the moment totality struck, entirely convinced that night had fallen. It was a Scooby-Doo moment when it was least expected. The Sun returned about ninety seconds later, leaving them, presumably, rather confused. Wherever in the world I've watched from, however remote, so many of the same primordial experiences return to me, regardless of how long it was since the last one. The background chorus of primal human awe-filled gasps as their breath is taken away by the spectacle, accompanied by their best friends the dogs, whom with the rest of nature are trying to make sense of it all. The sudden silencing of the birds, cross-fading with the sudden night-time sounds of cicadas rising up with premature appearance of the star-filled night sky; oddly universal details that other eclipse chasers will no doubt relate to.

Another one I still smile about: the 11 August 1999  which we watched from high in the Carpathian mountains in Romania, deep in the Romany homelands. Being in Transylvania as the sky darkened, we couldn't resist a few jokes about vampires finally getting their moment in the sun. In reality, the legend of vampires in Transylvania is as far from reality as the existance of Harry Potter's Hogwarts is in the UK, but the joke was irresistible nonetheless. These are exactly the kinds of memories that eclipses leaves you with.

Science has explained exactly why an eclipse happens. The logical mind understands it completely. But that understanding isn't what's wired into the body, which still reacts as if something is genuinely wrong, a hush, a chill, an instinct that has nothing to do with knowing better. It's a small window into how past civilisations, without that scientific explanation, must have experienced the same moment as something far more frightening and profound.

Over the years, the people have mattered as much as the eclipses themselves: lifelong friends seen every year, or every few years, on the circuit, and others who drift away from it entirely, only to return years later with families of their own, still drawn back to the same sky.