How cold is it in India?

Really cold.

I promised this entry would be about bucket showers, and it will be, but first you need some background on the weather and lifestyle here.

Stereotypically, India is always hot. Sometimes wet, sometimes now, but always hot. This is untrue.

Northern India gets cold. It's so cold that the schools have their three month break in the winter, while schools in the south have the break in the summer.

It isn't absolutely freezing all the time. When the sun comes out during the day it warms up, and it feels nice to be out in the sunshine, especially when the clouds burn off and you can see the mountains.

The buildings don't have heat. Going inside during the daytime is often colder than standing outside. You can never go inside to warm up.

Instead, everyone wears a base layer of long underwear that stays on all the time. Tibetan women sometimes wear three pairs of long underwear underneath their skirts. Then you wear between three and five layers on top. Because the classrooms aren't heated, I sit in class with a scarf and a hat and a blanket. Some people wear gloves. In one classroom you must remove your shoes, so we bring slippers or extra socks.

The dorms built out of concrete, and also don't have heat, so you sleep in your base layer (of course) and pajamas on top. I sleep in my sleeping bag, under a huge comforter. I made the mistake last night of touching the wall in my sleep. The iciness woke me up.

I should also mention that the dorms are completely open. We have a cats living under the first floor stairs, dogs and monkeys wander the halls at all times, and one day we had to chase out goats. Living here is a trip.

In addition to living without heat, solar energy heats the water in the dorms. Since it only gets warm when the sun shines, the water is
Always cold at night and sometimes doesn't work in the morning because the pipes freeze overnight.

Knowing all this, none of us expected much from the solar heated water. Yesterday, Julia and I decided to have a shower party after lunch to take advantage of the sun's maximum potential (using our trusty buckets, of course, I should probably throw in a picture of my bucket soon. We're thinking about decorating them).

We filled our buckets, and noted the steam rising from the water. Julia decided that it probably came from the difference between air and water temperature, which was a fair guess, so we proceeded.

Incorrect! To our delighted surprise, the water was deliciously hot. Hot enough to scald us and we ended up mixing it with cold water from the shower tap.

Using our smaller pails (also vital) to pour water over our heads, we created salon hair washing conditions crouched over buckets in concrete showers in the middle of northern India. Who would have thunk?

When we reported our findings at dinner, even the boys got excited at the prospect of hot water. That's when you know it's really cold.

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