26/5/14                                  The crazy hot season arrives!

Summer here doesn't just creep up on you slowly and tap you on the shoulder, no, it hijacks you suddenly overnight with a full frontal attack! One day we are leisurely strolling  in Lodhi gardens enjoying the vibrant display of flowers and the next morning we awake to a blanket of heat.The heat is relentless and vicious. It creeps under doors and through  windows, heating the house up to oven temperature! I swear I could bake a cake in my sitting room!! When I exit the flat, the sky is white with heat and the sun attacks my  skin with fiery darts. How did the 'Britishers' survive with no ac's? The worst is when the power cuts come and the ac's and fans stop whirring - an intense, suffocating heavy heat settles over me! I sit, unable to move, every part of me slick with perspiration! I  can imagine Tim returning  from work and finding all that is left of me is a puddle of water on the floor!
Even a cold refreshing shower is just a thing to dream about as the sun  heats the water in the tanks on the roof!! Short relief does come occasionally with squally thunderstorms and impressive lightning displays! I never thought I would be so deliriously happy to see dark clouds in the sky!!!

Towards the beginning of the hot season in April we escaped the city for a few days and headed up to Manali in the Himalyas. There is no direct train route there so we  went by bus, fourteen hours of nerve jangling, bone shaking travel! Driving along treacherous mountain roads in the pitch dark , narrowly avoiding lorries and trucks was terrifying! Especially as most of the time we were only a few centimetres from the edge of the road. At one point, I stared through the window into the darkness ,just making out the pinprick lights of dwellings hundreds of feet down in the valleys beneath us. I firmly shut  my eyes after that and willed sleep to come so that I would be oblivious to any impending disaster! Well, we made it there in one piece and proceeded to enjoy three beautiful, relaxing days.

It was wonderful to open my door in the morning to a vista of snow capped mountains and to breathe in the clear, crisp fresh air.