Chasing the Monsoon

Each year, on the first of June, the summer monsoon arrives over Trivandrum at the southernmost tip of India. Its majestic progress north towards the Himalayas, marked by celebrations, processions, festivals and a lot of released personal emotion, brings it ultimately to the old British hill station of Cherrapunji, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the wettest place on Earth. In 1987 Alexander Frater determined to follow the monsoon all the way up the subcontinent. This book is a record of his journey, and his growing awareness of the monsoon's towering influence on every aspect of Indian life. While awaiting the "burst" in Trivandrum he investigated the local monsoon cures, in Goa he joined rich socialites for one of their famously wild monsoon parties, at drought-stricken Deeg in Rajasthan he gained access to an astonishing monsoon pavilion where 3,000 coloured fountains gave the illusion of bountiful monsoon rain. When he reached Delhi, visited during Parliament's Monsoon Session, he found officials curiously reluctant to let him into Cherrapunji - and finally, having got there as an illegal immigrant and found a graveyard full of British suicides, he discovered why.