The fascinating and revealing story of Frater's journey through India in pursuit of the astonishing Indian summer monsoon. On the 20th May the Indian summer monsoon will begin to envelop the country in two great wet arms, one coming from the east, the other from the west. They are united over central India around the 10th July, a date that can be calculated to within seven or eight days. Frater aims to follow the monsoon, staying sometimes behind it, sometimes in front of it, and always watching the impact of this extraordinary phenomenon.During the anxious waiting, the weather forecaster is king and a joyful period ensues: there is a time of promiscuity, and scandals proliferate. Frater's journey takes him to Bangkok and a cowboy town on the Thai-Malaysian border to Rangoon and Akyab in Burma (where the front funnels up between the mountains and the sea). Alexander Frater's fascinating narrative reveals the exotic, often startling discoveries of an ambitious and irresistibly romantic adventure.