Geography lessons can completely slay your sense of aesthetics. They can really make life prosaic. Imagine this. Dark clouds have gathered. You look into the sky beseeching the lord for a mighty downpour. The rain boots are standing tall at the threshold. The first raindrop and you are ready to run out and dance in the rain. Suddenly that old geography lessons haunt you. If you are waiting for long rain, watch out for nimbostratus clouds; if you want hail, well, hail the cumulonimbus clouds. If you see a tall, puffy cloud that looks flat at the top or find flat low-level fray clouds floating around, rain is just another cloud away. They even define rain as precipitation that falls in the form of liquid water drops. They measure raindrops’ diameter (0.1 to 9 mm), discuss its shape (diminutive raindrops are round; big raindrops are shaped like parachutes). Even count them — every minute, 1 billion tons of rain falls on the earth. Too much geography can kill the delight called rain.
I love the rain. Period. I walk in the rain. As Roger Miller said: "Some people walk in the rain. Others just get wet."
I walk in the rain. And I could walk to the end of the equator for more rain. Where the rain gods shower in the heaven, their bath water spills off heaven as rain. It rains and rains and rains more. In that quest for more rain, I stumbled upon the world’s wettest, rainiest places.
Emei Shan, Sichuan Province, China
For the devout, Mount Emei is the home of the Buddha; on the top of the 3,099-metre-high mountain lives piety. Located in the Sichuan Province of China, Mount Emei is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China. Sitting at the western rim of the Sichuan basin, it is also the highest of the four sacred mountains. The pious come here to pray to the Buddha, rain lovers throng to the region between June and September to get soaked in the incessant rain. Not that other months are dry. Mount Emei gets nearly 250 days of rain, but June-September is the rainiest.
There is more to Mount Emei than the big fat constant rain. There’s the cloud spectacle that can dazzle even the bland. Known as the Clouds Sea, the spectacle includes several cloud phenomena, for example, clouds appearing in the sky above, in addition to the regular clouds beneath. Adding grandeur to the clouds is the sunrise where the sky turns purple with rosy clouds gathering at the crack of dawn. The Golden Summit of the mountain is the best viewpoint to see the sunrise and the Clouds Sea.
Pu’u Kukui, Maui, Hawaii, Oceania
Pu’u Kukui has too many u’s in its name. Too much of a tongue twister. But forget the u’s. Translate it into Hawaiian and call it Candlenut Hill. All you need to remember is that it is listed in the world’s top five wettest places. When the annual precipitation hits 9,820 mm (386.5 inches), you wonder whether there is ever a dry day in this Hawaiian mountain peak, the highest peak of Mauna Kahalawai (the West Maui Mountains), an 18-mile (30-km) stretch of mountains, the Honolua volcanic series, that dominates the western peninsula of Maui. Formed by a volcano, the 1,764-metre summit rises above the Pu'u Kukui Watershed Management Area, an 8,661-acre private nature preserve. The rains also bring in nature’s largesse and make the landscape lush and beautiful.
Mt Waialeale, Kauai, Hawaii, Oceania
Resting lazily behind the Kukui’ula is the magnificent Mt Wai’ale’ale. Located in the middle of the island, Mt Waialeale rises 1,569 m, making it the second highest peak on the island, after Kawaikini at 1,598 m. Eternally shrouded in wispy clouds, Waialeale averages 11,430 mm (450 inches) of rainfall annually. Receiving 683 inches of rain, 1982 was the rainiest year on record.
Translating into Rippling Water or Overflowing Water in Hawaiian, Mt Wai’ale’ale is sometimes tagged the world’s wettest place, a title that Mawsynram (India) holds now with the 38-year average rainfall of 11,870 mm (467.4 inches). Laymen have always wondered how Wai’ale’ale is so rainy when most of Hawaii is so sunny. It is all about location — situated in the northernmost region of the main Hawaiian Islands, Kauai is exposed to front winds and rain in the winter. The round shape of the summit exposes all its sides to dampening winds. Interestingly, rains peter away barely miles away from Wai’ale’ale —totalling a meagre 10 inches of rainfall a year. That is because the mountain’s steep cliffs cause the humid air to rise quickly, allowing for a large portion of rain in one spot.
Big Bog, Maui, Hawaii, Oceania
The Big Bog sounds more like the name of a wrestling hulk than that of a pretty scrap of land with endless rain. Located on the edge of Haleakala National Park overlooking Hana at about 5,400 feet elevation, Big Bog is the wettest place in the United States. For long, scientists knew nothing about the Big Bog. When they first set up the rain gauge in 1992, the maximum expected precipitation was 180 inches annually. But Big Bog proved the big scientists wrong. In 1994, Big Bog hit the 560-inch mark, and the 30-year average was 404 inches.
Big Bog is beautiful. But not many can partake in its glory. One either does an arduous two-day trek or hops into a chopper into the bog where several endemic plants create an amazing kaleidoscope.
Debundscha, Cameroon, Africa
Sitting at the foot of Mount Cameroon’s south-western corner, Debundscha is set up for massive downpour. Nature planned it that way. The 4,095-metres mountain rising from the coast of south Atlantic ocean blocks the rain-forming clouds from passing it. The mountain literally traps the clouds, resulting in abundant rainfall throughout the year. Its proximity to the equator, which is consistently hot and humid, gives Debundscha a long rainy season and a short dry season in a year. Receiving over 10,000 mm (400 inches) of rain annually, this village in Cameroon is often listed amongst the five rainiest places on earth.
San Antonio de Ureca, Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea
Stacked in the northernmost part of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, and also known as Ureka or Ureca, San Antonio de Ureca is the wettest place in Africa. Receiving 10,450 mm (418 inches) of rainfall annually, this village in Bioko Sur Province has a wet season from February to June and September to December. The inland areas receive less rainfall than the coast — in Bata, during the rainiest months (September-November), the average rainfall is 2,400 mm (95 inches), while the coastal town of Calatrava gets 4,600 mm (180 inches). Rainfall slows down inland with Mikomeseng receiving under 1,500 mm (60 inches) annually.
Cropp River, New Zealand
In the nine-km long river, rain is not measured — as is wont — in millimetres. There is so much rainfall that it is measured in metres. Not 1, not 2, but 18 metres of rain annually. That makes the Cropp River, inland from Hokitika, the wettest place in New Zealand. And one day in December 1995, 1,049 mm (41.3 inches) of rain fell over the Cropp River, a record rainfall for a 48-hour period for New Zealand. The rain is not just fat raindrops, it brings along a largesse. At higher altitudes, the rain comes in the form of snow, filling the alpine basins and forming glaciers that have shaped the landscape of the Westland. Torrents of rain bring along debris from the mountainside, making the fertile floodplains that houses the rainforest. In the Cropp River, which joins the Whitcombe River, every drop of rainwater is recycled by nature — everything runs into the Tasman Sea, returned to the clouds to fall as rain again.
Tutunendo, Colombia, South America
Tutunendo is fragrant. It sits by a township near Quibdó, whose name is derived from an Embera word meaning ‘river of fragrances’. Tutunendo, the wettest place in South America, is small. With a human head count barely crossing the 3,000 mark. There are more clouds in Tutunendo than there are people. The clouds seem to hang permanently from the grey sky with barely three-four hours of sunshine each day. Rain is abundant throughout the year, averaging 463 inches of annual rain. Tutunendo is the wettest in autumn (September and October), though August and November are also very wet. Even the driest months (February and March) get at least 20 days of rain each month.
The climate is that of a tropical rainforest — very hot, high humidity, no wind and a lot of rain. The day and the night are almost the same length all year around because it is very close to the equator. Pristine rivers cascade down several waterfalls, one of these is known as ‘Alka-Seltzer Falls’, because of the effervescence produced when the water hits the rocks.
Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, India
For the longest possible, Cherrapunji was the wettest place on earth, a tag it lived with great fat raindrops. Originally called Sohra, it has fallen into second place in the ‘wettest’ list. But it still puffs about the two Guinness World Records for receiving the maximum amount of rainfall in a single year: 26,471 mm (1,042.2 inches) of rainfall between August 1860 and July 1861, and for receiving the maximum amount of rainfall in a single month: 9,300 mm (370 inches) in July 1861. Known for its subtropical highland climate, Cherrapunji looks the prettiest from The Viewpoint where countless waterfalls hurtle into a large pool.
Mawsynram, Meghalaya, India
Call it the gawky neighbour that toppled the long-reigning monarch. That is Mawsynram, the town in Meghalaya, that toppled Cherrapunji off the Wettest Place on Earth throne. So cloudy and rainy is the village that clouds float right into homes and the entire existence is rain-driven. Labourers wear full-body umbrellas made of bamboo and banana leaf, and the natives train ficus roots to span bridges over frothing rivers. You need to do all this and more when the rains hit a record-breaking 11,861 mm a year. Step into Mawsynram between December and February and you’d find locals queuing up at taps where water is a trickle. Even the world’s wettest place has water woes!