Chasing the Monsoon: A Modern Pilgrimage through India

Written by Alexander Frater

Narrated by Bernard Mayes

This is the inspiring story of how one man realized his dream of witnessing firsthand the most dramatic of meteorological events: the Indian monsoon.

Alexander Frater spent the first six years of his life on a South Pacific island, where his father, the only doctor within a thousand square miles, encouraged his fascination and respect for the volatile play of the elements. Frater brings this heritage to his observations on the monsoon, following it from its burst on the beaches of Trivandrum through Delhi and Calcutta, across Bangladesh, to its finale in the town of Cherrapunji, the "wettest place on earth." With exceptional sensitivity and wit, Frater uses fact, impression, and anecdote to vividly describe his own experience of the monsoon while also illustrating the towering influence of nature over the lives of Indians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781624607561

Alexander Frater

Alexander Frater has contributed to various UK publications - Miles Kington called him 'the funniest man who wrote for Punch since the war' - and as chief travel correspondent of the Observer, he won an unprecedented number of British Press Travel Awards. He lives in London though, whenever time and money allow, is likely to be found skulking deep in the hot, wet tropics.

Reviews for Chasing the Monsoon

[maximnoronha · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book surprisingly failed to engage me. I know what they say about the cover and the title, but I still got fooled. Without analyzing too much, I think one reason could be because I shifted from my kindle to the paperback edition I owned, with really small font size to boot, and I had to read most of this one lying down because I had hurt my back. That may have affected my concentration in no small measure. Or maybe I just wasn't interested.

The passages to do with description of the weather are well written, but how many of those can you take? But they were few and far between. I think what also did me in were the frequent lapses into entire passages from books with "olde" english, with facts and tid-bits perhaps interesting to researchers, but something I had little interest in. I could at best only scan those to get back on track. I did read 'em but I wasn't paying attention. A good bit of the book was about the author trying to obtain permission to get to Cherrapunji.

I wish the entire book was like the last chapter. It would have been more readable. This one was a very tough exercise in trying to get the book over with. I only persisted because I'd bought the damn thing. Hodja's Peppers.

[nandakishore_varma-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is, without doubt, the most fascinating travelogue I have ever read. Frater follows the monsoon from its genesis in Kerala up to Cherrapunji in Assam, the wettest place on earth: in the process, he gives fascinating insights about India, the monsoon, India the monsoon (a strange entity!) and human nature in general. His writing is wryly humorous (without being sarcastic) and sympathetic at the same time.

Being from Kerala, I know and love the monsoon. So it was all the more enjoyable for me. As I read the book, I could almost smell the smell of the first rains on parched soil, what we call "the smell of new earth".

Highly recommended.