Adjusting…To the Air Temperature

The most interesting thing about much of the weather here is how quickly your body adjusts to it – when I first arrived in Hubli, I thought it was hilarious to see so many people wearing hats, gloves, and earmuffs in 85 degree (approximately 29 Celsius) weather. Initially, I thought it was a style – after all, I’ve seen many people back home wearing huge jackets and noobies (hats) in slightly warmer weather just for style. But here, it turns out, that people were serious – they really were cold at plus 80 degrees! If it happened to rain, or was a little windier than normal, the winter gear would come out. Sure that I would never feel cold in India since I’m originally from a place that can easily dip below -25 degrees Fahrenheit (-32 Celsius) in the winter, I never took the weather precautions from concerned coworkers and friends very seriously. Usually just taking a hike from my guesthouse to the DCSE building was enough to have me sweating bullets. So advice  to put cotton in my ears at night, or to turn off the fan to keep from catching a head cold, seemed ridiculous to me when most days seemed to alternate between feeling like I was baking in an oven to steaming  in a sauna.

But over time, I most definitely did adjust (at least to a degree) and start to feel some of the temperature changes just like the locals. I really first noticed the weather differences when I had to travel between 4 different cities within a fairly short time period – I thought Hubli was hot, but Bangalore is much hotter and extremely sunny – in all of my travels not even Brazil seemed to have such bright, eye burning sunshine as Bangalore city, and only Thailand seemed brighter and hotter – then on to Mysore which was much milder than both Bangalore and Hubli, but still pleasantly warm; and ending in New Delhi that, at about 75 degrees Fahrenheit  in the evenings, had me freezing and shivering like I was in a Chicago winter – and left me with a pretty bad head cold to boot.  So now when traveling I carry my ear muffs and at least one extra dupatta in case I run into any more “cold” weather while I’m here.

Of course, the adjustment is by no means total. I find that I am still the only one in my office that is happy to have the fan on high constantly and I don’t think I’ll ever like the taste of warm water. And I’ve yet to adjust to the daily rains of monsoon season and the swarms of mosquito’s they bring, but overall I have learned to tolerate the weather enough to get through any daily tasks comfortably. Plus, no matter what, the heat and humidity here can at times still be much more forgiving than the cold, dry, skin-chafing winters of the Northern United States.