Chasing the Monsoon - Alexander Frater

My late sister gave me a book in 2012 - here is her inscription dated Nov 2012.

She died shortly after in February of 2013. The book came to Australia with us but was forgotten for all these years until in lockdown I started looking for books on my shelf I had not read. This was one of them. I have just finished it and I loved every page. She always introduced me to the best writing and her choice here is no exception to that. 

The author is a journalist who was born in the South Pacific island group of Vanuatu. A picture which hung beside his bed painted by L. Geo Lopez was of Cherrapunji Assam, "The wettest place on earth". It had been a wedding present to his parents and his father often spoke of going there but never managed. So Alexander went on his behalf and followed the monsoon from Trivandrum in the deep south to the village of Cherrapunji in the North east of the Sub Continent near Shillong. 

I loved his determination to get there, to cut through all the red tape and ministerial obstacles, the descriptions of the various modes of travel, the monsoon arriving in various parts of the country and the reaction of Indian people to the coming of the rains and their significance. It is full of wonderful and humorous stories of how he travelled up the country chasing the monsoon ending up, almost like a pilgrimage to his father, in this distant village. Well it felt a bit like a pilgrimage to my sister as well.