Heat

We knew it was going to be hot. I worried about how David (he who must be kept cool) would handle it, but never thought I'd be the one with the problem. By 10am the sun is high enough in the sky to begin baking everything it touches. You can almost see stream rising from the pavement. You feel like your head is going to explode, and then you see women walking down the street balancing pallets of bricks on their heads. How's that for an instant attitude correction?Practically speaking, being outside from 10 until 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon is asking for heat stroke. For a seaside town there is a surprising absence of any sort of sea breeze. You know when you don't have to pee from breakfast to dinner you've not had nearly enough to drink. The school kids start their day at 6:30 and are in their way home before noon and the sports activities start on the parade ground (athletic field) right after dawn and end by 10am, picking up again after 5pm. This explains why, at one in the afternoon I am sitting in our lovely air conditioned hotel room catching up in the blog instead of sightseeing. We are planning where to go next. This takes a lot of time and energy as the internet is snail paced and phone calls sometimes go through and some times simply float around in space until they overcome the force of gravity and are lost forever.We are between the weather equivalent of a rock and a hard place. Along the coasts and into the plains it's blazing hot, while the inland hill stations can be quite cold. We've shipped back all our winter clothes. Farther north toward the Himalayas it's still winter and even David who so badly wants to return to Darjeeling or go to Dharamsala agrees that the weather makes it a problematic destination. We actually considered leaving India to go to someplace temperate and affordable in Europe, but that place doesn't seem to exist. Morocco seemed like a good idea until we read the State Department's warnings. Anyway, this is an India trip, not a Europe or Africa trip.We agree that ours in not in any way such a terrible problem to have, in fact we continually pinch ourselves at our enormous good fortune to have the chance to do any of this.Update: it looks like we've decided on Northern Rajasthan after a few days at the beach and some time on a houseboat in Kerala's Backwaters. Stay tuned for updates.