Monsoon

A short update, but a cool story. First let me take you back a couple of weeks. One of the other volunteers are Daya Dan and I decided that it would be good exercise to start walking back from the home to our hotel. That sounds fine does it not? Sure as long as the weather’s good, but alas we’re in the middle of monsoon season. Fortunatly for us it’s been a dry monsoon season, which is not so fortunate for the farmers. Now on this one particular day we started walking while the weather was nice enough and we even made it halfway before it began to drizzle. Before long the rain started coming down pretty good, but we, being both of us from the northwest, thought nothing of rain. As the Indian people covered their stalls and sought cover from the torrential downpour, we kept walking.

Just keep walking, just keep walking

I even made the comment, only two guys from the Northwest would walk through this while all the locals stayed dry.

That in and of itself was a cool experience, but the other day I had a better one. As we were at Daya Dan during the morning the rain began coming down at a good pace, and did not stop. So as we finished our morning there and went to leave it was still raining. I felt like walking, or running as I’ve been trying to do lately, back home, I set out in the rain. Little did I know of the situation further along. The roads had become so flooded in points that there was no dry place to stand, even on the sidewalks. The water is so dirty that you can not see the ground be it two feet or two inches beneath the surface of the water. So, for the experience and sheer adventure of it I trekked my way through the flooded streets and sidewalks to make it back to my street, only to find that it is the most flooded of them all. It is indeed a sad story that my camera broke and I was unable to take photos of these events; but even if I had, those pictures would not be able to encapsulate the experience.

One of the favorite street side restraints here was so flooded that it closed down early, but before it did all of their seats were taken by the hardcore patrons who sat with feet up out of the grimy water while eating and the cooks kept cooking while standing knee deep in the flood.

To say the least I loved it, until I realized that my room is on the ground floor and may be flooded. My fears were all for not as the hotel I am at is on high ground and has some excellent drainage. Excellent that is during a monsoon, but during a regular rainfall it’s terrible. Go Figure.

I know some of you out there can vouch for my story, while others may be bewildered. For the people here, this stiff happens, and you live with it, but they still don’t like being splashed when someone goes running past :P Oh, and it’s strange walking down the sidewalk and having waves from the wake of the cars driving down the street breaking around your ankles.
One thing I wish I had had with me on that day was a skim board, it would have been so much fun. How much fun? SO much fun!