South India travel photography by Meghan Andrews Photography

I thought I would share my photos from my latest travels to India- one of the most intriguing, magical, contrasting countries I have ever visited. Right from the moment the plane landed I was hooked, and I know I’ll be visiting again as there’s still a lot of India to see. Firstly I visited Goa to do a yoga retreat there for 10 days in the middle of the jungle, it was so spectacular and soul cleansing. The retreat really taught me to slow down and just relax. We were fed really nutritious food everyday from their organic garden, and at night we would have bonfires and listen to music. We were surrounded by monkeys and exotic birds, It was a very spiritual place. When we weren’t doing yoga during the day we would spend our days by the sandy white beaches of Agonda.

After the retreat ended our group took the train to Hampi, and had such an amazing time there. We went to a lot of amazing Hindu temple ruins and hiked up the Monkey Temple at sunset, it was very breathtaking. We also went swimming which was an incredibly refreshing break from that hot Indian sun. A lot of the locals just wear their underwear swimming; we even saw one local boy with a belt around his underwear so they wouldn’t fall down, very resourceful! 🙂

Then after our Hampi adventure we headed back to Goa where we took part in the Holi Festival, which is the festival where they throw coloured powder at each other. It was SO much fun and everyone was covered head to foot in colour. It was a perfect ending to my time down south. The next day I headed up north to Rishikesh to continue to do more yoga/meditation, but that’s on a separate blog post: India Part 2-the North.

If you still can’t get enough of India like me, have a look at another trip I did where I became more of a tourist and got a great taste of Indian life and architecture. It’s India: Round 3.

On the ferry to Hampi, they jam packed us in so tight, until you can’t move. You can’t see in the photo but there’s at least 4 motorcycles packed in there!