SacBee Does The Indian Monsoon

Photo © AP / Channi Anand-All Rights Reserved
The Frame of The Sacramento Bee featured over two dozen photographs by mostly Indian photographers of the monsoon rains in India. Travel photographers usually plan their trips to avoid the monsoon season which generally pans from June to September, and yet it's then that the light is at its most gorgeous.

I reacall being (unfortunately without a camera) in a rickshaw in Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi during the month of June, when the heavens burst into heavy downpour that lasted no more than 5 minutes. We were immobilized for that time but when the rain stopped, the light was just ethereal.

One of the participants in my forthcoming (at the end of September) Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo Expedition™ wondered whether we would experience any laggard rains. I certainly hope so....!!!

Incidentally, one of the most entertaining books on the Indian monsoon is Alexander Frater's Chasing the Monsoon, in which he describes how he followed the monsoon, sometimes ahead of it....and at other times, staying behind it, and observing the impact this annual phenomenon has of the sub-continent and beyond.

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