Monsoon season
I'm in the process of deciding how much weight to give to the common guidebook advice about when not to travel to India: monsoon season. My initial thoughts are that I should go when I can go, guidebooks to unfamiliar places cater to the risk-averse mean of Western travelers, and the monsoon is apt to be very manageable. It is, as our parents and Peter Gabriel used to say, only water.
Why on earth would you ignore advice that is so, so ubiquitous? A quick google search revealed that Delhi averages half an inch of rain a day during August, or basically a constant downpour. Not exactly amenable to walking around and taking pictures, imo. - MWR's old friendWell, goodness, MWR's old friend, why on earth does MWR do half the things MWR does? One reason is that I love to dispute accepted wisdom (though long a convert to, and even an owner of, proper evening dress for gentlemen). I'm conscious of how this contraphilia can prejudice me. Still, when writers go on and on about the breadth and diversity of the subcontinent, and then somewhere pronounce "don't go in the summer," it's the irony that always stands out. Shall writers consider whether readers will be somewhere when August means 25 wet days and two feet of rain, or is it more like 12 rainy days and ten inches? I'm not thinking about Mumbai during this period, though it might be epic. Are writers considering that overcast days are best for my photography? No, they are considering that rainy days will reduce my chances of having the guidebook-template trip most readers likely have in mind. I'm an outlier. And I can deal with some rain, for God's sake. I won't have come all that way to sit inside waiting for the Cat in the Hat to come entertain me. My guess is that it's not a "constant downpour," but more episodic and heavy rain. That's the pattern I expect to see in warm areas with high rainfall totals.
A few years ago, though web postings, I was decisive in convincing a NYC-based photographer that he should come to Olympic National Park in October. His impression had been that it would be raining all the time, but I was able to locate historical data suggesting it might not rain much at all on his proposed dates in the park:
Looking at the dates of your trip during the 2000-2004 period, I count 10 days with recorded rainfall and 25 days without. On only four days out of the 35 was there rainfall in excess of two-tenths of an inch. This is in a place that averages about 117 inches of rain a year.Here, closer examination showed that an outsider's impression about some of our local weather was way off base. I'm not expecting this level of "clarification" about monsoon season on the central plains, but I'm comforted to read comments like this on a popular bulletin-board site for India travel:
As you can gather, it typically does not rain incessantly on days when rainfall is recorded, so even if your weather were not ideal there would likely be significant periods when it was not raining. It is a safe assumption that it will be cloudy during your visit, but you might get lucky
There's really only one answer to any monsoon question: you might get wet, you might not. India's summer monsoon is usually an afternoon cloudburst, though sometimes you catch a spell where it rains for a few days straight. The monsoon is not a constant month-long deluge.
Labels: a modest proposal from MWR, contraphilia, India
posted at 12:22 AM
