Wonders of the Monsoon

From India to Australia, all life awaits the transforming power of the monsoon rains. The sun baked continent causes hot air to rise, sucking moist monsoon winds in from the coast and dramatic electrical storms herald the first rains.

With a whisper on the wind, pre-monsoon showers come to Thailand. Assamese macaque monkeys play in the waters and gorge themselves on a monsoon delicacy of water snails. To the west, in India, huge banks of cloud roll in, heralding four months of incessant rain. Finally, monsoon rainwater flows back, through the great rivers of Asia, to the Indian Ocean. It brings with it a vast lode of nutrients. Year round, blue whales congregate off the coast of Sri Lanka, in search of the bounty that the monsoon brings.

During the part of the year that the monsoon doesn’t bring rain, the winds reverse, bringing instead, dry air and even drought to large parts of the region. Fed by the previous rains, budgerigars swarm in the Australian desert. In the Rajasthan Desert, Pushkar hosts the world’s largest camel fair early in the dry season. In Sri Lanka, Asia’s largest gathering of elephants is seen at an ancient man-made lake, where mugger crocodiles stalk the prey that is forced there to drink. Finally, the monsoon winds reverse, they will soon bring rain again, but only after the mother of all sandstorms.

On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, black crested macaques thrive in large troops. They are amongst the most `loving' of monkeys, showing affection not just amongst close family, but across the whole group.

An extraordinary story of the relationship between nature and the people of the monsoon, from the ancient past to the future.