In the Upper Siang district, it rains more than 4 metres a year...picture that for a second.
And there wasn't a month without rain in the last year I visited. Often it is disappointing if I have planned out some work for the month. But its also fun jumping in giving in to the ways of nature.
So this time it happened like this; Roy and I had to reach Bomdo from Jengging but it had already started raining for days. I remember reading in a John Steinbeck book about a character who could describe ten or more different kinds of rain, all of which he found annoying. There is only one kind of rain here; hard rain which takes breaks to drizzle before it brings along a landslide often followed by a roadblock. But I had to get back equipment to return to the institute I was leaving to get the 'no due' certificate and had brought a crank radio and few cds for some of the villagers. So I waited two days, no break in the rain.
Then morning before yesterday's we left...rain or no rain, had to finish the chores. 10 am we left on a bike from Jengging and rode continuously for three hours to get to Bomdo, 70 km away. Once we reached Gekut's house in Bomdo, he quickly popped some corn and brewed some black tea. The thing about riding in the rain is that it is all fine till one has to stop. The time I stopped at the village after the cold ride I could not stop shivering for a long time! At one point I had to pee (locally referred to as 'minus'!) and my hands were too numb to even feel the trouser button, was a struggle!
After collecting the equipment and bidding our byes, the next stop on the return was Ramsing village 30 km away. The home that we stopped briefly at I asked for some rice wine to warm us up and then headed back to Jengging to reach at 6 pm. Got back, took a hot water bath and all good things followed including writing an ode to Jengging!
During the two days of waiting for this trip, I spent some time photographing waterdrops; this is the best thing you can do when its raining continuously and better still if you have a 500 mm lens...those drops of rain are sprinkled around on the blogpost.
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