A hot wind blows...

I'm saddened that this blog doesn't allow me to share all of the sensory experiences of India with you first hand... I do my best to give you a sense of the visual and aural with my various videos, but even those lack a certain ... what would you call it? ... engulfing force that the combined sight, sound, smell, touch/heat of India just can't be described by words alone...

... but I'll still give it a try.

I've probably mentioned before that weather here kinda plateaus instead of changing gradually. It is like someone flips a switch and the weather goes into it's next mode. For example, around Republic Day (Jan 26), the flip was switched to "spring": bright sun-shiny days with a chilly breeze in the air.

A couple of weeks ago the flip was switched to "summer" (not to be confused with "monsoon"), which added a hot dry wind to the bright sun-shiny days ... making you feel like you are literally baking in an oven.

You know what I'm talking about, when you're checking on a pie or maybe a mexican lasagna you got in the oven ... and that scorching dry heat wafts into your face .... yeah, that's what I'm talking about... now imagine that feeling every time the wind blows. Allen thinks that walking down the street sometimes you feel as if you are walking towards a giant hair dryer. The breeze doesn't help at all. In India they have a special term for this Hot Wind - they call it "Loo".

It is sort of counter-intuitive, right ... usually in the dog.-days of summer you beg for a breeze to lick your sweat and cool you down. Here it is a whole different story.

When all is said and done I'm guessing Allen and I are averaging about 3 - 4 liters a day of water just to stay hydrated in this weather (the temperatures are currently averaging around the low 100s).

I guess we should be thankful though that this isn't monsoon weather (humid, sticky, and in the 110s degrees).