Chasing The Monsoon

Lessons on human endurance and compassion, learnt on a journey across countries.

- Bhanu Prakash Chandra

It was raining nonstop in Chik-kamagaluru, my hometown, not too far from Agumbe, one of the wettest places in India. I was on leave, preparing for a monsoon adventure biking trip in the Western Ghats. A day before starting the trip, my mother and I were planting teak and coffee saplings at our farm, freshly washed by the rainwater. My mother thanked the gods for blessing us with good rains. I was farming and listening to the BBC podcast, and I told her that the same rains have sealed 13 people alive deep inside a cave in Thailand.

When I got a call from office to rush immediately to the Tham Luang cave, my mother suggested not to remove my rubber rain boots and tucked in my raincoat and clothes into the saddle bag of my motorcycle.

I never imagined that my adventure would change its direction—that in the next 18 hours, I will be near the Thailand-Myanmar border, the epicentre of the multinational rescue operation in the flooded cave network. For me, acclimatisation was easy, as the hilly terrain and rainy weather of Mae Sai, the town near Tham Luang cave, felt like our very own Western Ghats.

Most passengers in the early morning flight from Bangkok to Chiang Rai, the airport nearest to Tham Luang, were like me—international press persons headed towards the cave site with heavy camera bags and rainproof boots and clothing. Four boys had already been rescued by the time I reached the place where television reporters were broadcasting live in almost all languages in the world!