Chasing the Monsoon

by Alexander Frater (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1990

  $4.24

  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.

• Used

  Paperback
  1991

  $3.28

  On 20th May the Indian summer monsoon will begin to envelop the country in two great wet arms, one coming from the east, the other from the west. They are untied over central India around 10th July, a date that can be calculated within seven or eight days. Frater aims to follow the monsoon, staying sometimes behind it, sometimes in front of it, and everywhere watching the impact of this extraordinary phenomenon. During the anxious period of waiting, the weather forecaster is king, consulted by pie-crested cockatoos, and a joyful period ensues: there is a period of promiscuity, and scandals proliferate. Frater's journey will take him to Bangkok and the cowboy town on the Thai- Malaysian border to Rangoon and Akyab in Burma (where the front funnels up between the mountains and the sea).