Cherapunjee the driest desert
As the vehicle drives into Cherrapunjee, a huge notice greets it. "Welcome to the wettest place on earth'. Sure it rains here (although that morning at 8 am there was a mild but persistent drizzle, cold light sleet in fact): 1,000 cm in a year. The Cherrapunjee line veritably leaps off the x-axis (see graph). How it rains here! For 5 months, from May to September, upon this land which is a plateau it rains. And the clouds gather woolly and bulbous, as they had that morning.
A long queue of women beside containers weaves away from an extremely dubious tap poking out of a gritty concrete post. Water trickles from it. Is it possible the wettest place on earth wants for water? That seems to be the impression, until L L Sorung, a teacher, confirms it is the truth. "We get water anytime between 7 to10 in the morning and 5 to 6 in the evening.' But this is the logic of rationing. Water is being apportioned here.
This scarce commodity drizzles on.
The landscape is extremely deforested. "Barren' works here. But this ought to have been a forest. Regional ecology