India
Poombarai
A terraced village on the western edge of the Palani hills, where the cloud comes up the escarpment in the afternoon and the plains appear and disappear all evening.
10.2564°N, 77.4072°E
Poombarai sits at about 1,920 metres on the western rim of the Palani hills, in Dindigul district, twenty-odd kilometres out from Kodaikanal. The village works a steep face of terraces — garlic mostly, the small hill kind, along with carrots and potatoes — and the Kuzhandai Velappar temple below it is old enough that its founding gets attributed to Bhogar rather than to anyone with dates.
The weather does the work
Everything in these photographs is the same event from different angles: warm air off the plains hitting the escarpment and turning into cloud on the way up. It arrives in the afternoon, fills the valley, and spends the evening deciding whether to clear. The rainbow and the sunset are both side effects.