The monsoon
the greatest weather system on Earth.
The giver of life
and the destroyer.
Shaping magical lands
from the Himalayas
to Australia.
Its impact felt by giants
the exquisite
and the bizarre.
Where spectacular nature meets the planet's most vibrant cultures.
This is the story of the monsoon at its most extreme.
Each year, from Cambodia to India
the hot months of summer herald a life-changing deluge.
It brings great danger.
And enormous opportunity.
There's a mystical world, where tree roots reach across the sky.
A twisted landscape that holds its breath, in anticipation of the coming storm.
Beneath the surface a giant stirs.
She must act while there's still time.
She's a Frog-faced soft-shell turtle.
Her eggs must develop in dry sand
before the monsoon turns their world upside-down.
This is the 'mother of water', the Mekong.
It's April in Cambodia, and the first rains are yet to arrive.
After two months, incubating in the sand, the baby soft-shelled turtles are emerging.
They must reach water
but first they have a desert to cross.
Their shells are just rubbery skin, light and flexible.
Their flattened shape will be key to their survival.
They will spend their lives hidden in the sand.
Here, they are ready for anything the monsoon will throw at them.
Everyone seems restless.
Cormorants are waiting to nest on a nearby lake.
But most of the lake bed is dry.
This village sits where the lake should be.
It's a fishing village, with no fish.
Cambodians depend on freshwater fish more than any other nation on Earth.
So they need the rains to flood this land.
For kids like Thorn, the world revolves around an annual wonder of nature.
The summer deluge and the gifts of the 'Mother River'.
The Mekong flows south from the Himalayas for over 2500 miles
feeding 6 countries across South East Asia
including Thailand, where rainclouds are building.
It's May.
The monsoon begins with a whisper on the wind.
A pre-monsoon shower.
Not yet the full deluge
but enough to spark a little magic in the forest.
It's been bone dry for months.
So for young Assamese macaques this is a new experience.
But their parents know the rains deliver something much more enticing.
If only they could find it.
A water snail.
Delicious!
These snails survived the drought under rocks, locked away in their shells.
Winkling them out is fiddly
so the monkeys pocket them in their cheek pouches
to be enjoyed at leisure.
As spring turns to summer, warm air rises over the land
sucking in moist monsoon winds from the Indian Ocean.
Storm clouds form at sea.
In India, the southern state of Kerala is where they strike first.
It's June.
The long wait is over.
This is the Indian monsoon.
Heavy, unceasing rain.
Rainfall is usually measured in millimetres
but during the monsoon, a metre can fall in just a day.
Clouds roll in.
Wave after wave.
Even if the fierce sun breaks through, the dampness never dries.
For four long months, the deluge overwhelms the land.
Transforming the lives of everyone, and everything.
Like the great Hindu god Shiva, the monsoon can be a destroyer
bringing chaos and destruction.
But like Shiva, it also brings rebirth, and new life.
The challenge for all is not simply to survive the monsoon
but to grasp opportunity it offers.
Puddles and pools are forming everywhere.
Perfect for frogs and toads.
For this female Indian common toad, the first rains mean she can breed at last.
And she must hurry, for it's a one day event!
A suitor awaits.
In fact, there's a whole crowd of them.
Prompted by the monsoon rains
the males have all turned yellow for this one special day.
They may dress to impress
but they don't waste time with niceties.
You might think the colour would help tell the girls from the boys
but it doesn't seem to make any difference.
After all, today could be their only chance to sire a new generation.
The first tadpoles to hatch out will have a crucial head start in the race to grow
before the waters recede again.
Just two weeks after the first rains
another creature begins to emerge from the monsoon pools.
Having grown up as an aquatic larva, the adult mosquito is water repellent.
Her mission is also to reproduce.
But it's a dangerous new world for one so small.
Raindrops can reach speeds of nearly 20 miles per hour.
For a mosquito, you might think that's like being hit by a bus.
But scientific research has recently revealed how mosquitoes flying in the monsoon cheat death.
They are so water-repellent, that most raindrops simply glance off them.
A direct hit looks fatal
but the insect is so light and flexible that she can absorb the impact
and shake off the drop, as though nothing had happened.
Insects multiply.
For many they are the monsoon's curse.
Female mosquitoes need blood to grow their eggs.
Cases of malaria increase by ten times during the monsoon.
It brings perils but also wonders.
This is the magic of the monsoon.
Beneath the building cloud, India is transforming.
But in the driest parts of the interior, the land will take longer to turn green.
Here, Indian wolves await the monsoon's bounty.
This female gave birth back in winter and the pups must soon be weaned.
She is staking their lives on the monsoon, to bring them fresh meat.
Sheep and goats are the staple diet of most Indian wolves.
And they go where the grass is greenest.
A journey where old India meets new.
Mahendra leads his livestock, and his extended family
on a never-ending quest for fresh pasture.
They've been on the move for eight months.
Now, with rain on the way, they're heading for their homeland.
The striped hyena is the wolf's main competitor
and will often chase a wolf from a carcass.
She too needs to hunt if she is to provide milk for her cubs.
Home at last, just ahead of the monsoon rains.
They will soon turn this barren land green again.
The only the protection the sheep will have is a flimsy net.
And it must be up before sundown.
Guard dogs have nail-studded collars for their protection.
It's at night that the predators will come.
When the light fades, a thermal camera reveals what the naked eye can't see.
Warm bodies glow white.
The net is not secure.
Hyenas!
Their scent drifts on the wind.
The dogs have been bred to be fearless.
And the hyenas can't afford to risk injury.
Wolves!
A wolf bit through the top rope of the net.
Mahendra is surprisingly philosophical.
For him, it's a small price to pay for the bounty he hopes the monsoon will bring.
By the end of July, all of India, from the coast to the Himalayas
is transformed by a cloak of green.
This is Rudyard Kipling country.
The Jungle Book in all its splendour.
Baloo, the sloth bear, knows the rains will bring tasty termites.
Colonel Hathi and the troop have eked out a living on leaves, twigs and bark
but now fresh grass means they can range free and wide.
For Shere Khan, the monsoon is a double-edged sword.
Chital deer no longer gather at waterholes where they can be easily ambushed.
But the fresh growth nurtures a new generation of prey.
The chital team up with langur monkeys.
The deers' noses and the langurs' eyes alert to potential danger.
Everywhere there's danger and opportunity
and both increase as the monsoon rains continue.
At their peak, 17 million tonnes of water fall on the subcontinent every minute.
Right across southern Asia, rivers have become swollen with monsoon rains.
Along the Mekong, it's what all life has been waiting for.
The flow of the 'Mother River' has increased 400 percent
and now her influence is colossal.
She has created a whole new habitat, a flooded forest, where fish swim.
Now is the time for them to feed and grow fat.
But it's never safe to loiter.
The soft-shelled turtle can strike faster than a cobra.
Downstream, the monsoon is responsible for an extraordinary phenomenon.
The Mekong is met by the River Sap, which flows from a large lake.
The river's natural flow is from west to east, into the Mekong.
But the Mekong becomes so swollen with monsoon rain
that it pushes water uphill, back up the Sap river.
The river's flow has reversed.
Taking with it, huge numbers fish.
They head for the lake, called Tonle Sap
which balloons to eight times its former size
a vast inland sea that swallows up around a tenth of Cambodia.
Thom's world is now transformed.
His village can now only be reached by boat.
Nurses paddle to their patients, and traders punt their wares from door to door.
There is no longer any dry land to grow vegetables.
And they keep their pigs in floating sties.
But they can trade fish and shrimp from the lake for other goods.
So Thorn and his dad go fishing every day.
The lake is vast.
And full of millions of fish.
They swam in from the Mekong and are now in fish paradise.
In these warm rich waters, young fish rapidly grow to maturity.
And the drowned trees offer much needed protection from the most skilful of predators.
Cormorants have flown in from the Mekong
joining resident colonies of Oriental darter
known also as snakebirds, on account of their necks.
This bird is a beautifully adapted fish hunter.
It has a hinge in its neck
with powerful muscles that thrust its head forward like a spear.
It submerges to hunt underwater.
Dense bones keep its body below the surface so it dives with barely a ripple.
Fishing is a skill that has to be learned.
This youngster has just left the nest to enrol in snakebird school.
Other students are already training.
But where are the fish?
No, just a leaf.
But that's OK, she is honing a vital skill.
If she impales a fish, she needs to flick it off her bill and catch it head-first.
All the youngsters are practising.
Perseverance eventually pays off.
She's well on her way to independence.
Elsewhere, the monsoon floods are not always so benevolent.
At the bay of Bengal, the Indian ocean reaches closest to the Himalayas.
Monsoon rain clouds collide with the mountains, creating the wettest region on Earth.
Through the middle flows the mighty Brahmaputra.
And bordering the river is Kaziranga national park.
Horne to giants.
This youngster was born in the dry season.
Even then there was water
and she has spent many days finding her feet in the deep pools.
She still has much to learn.
In the heat of the day the elephants wallow amongst the floating water hyacinth.
It's a delicacy, but first it has to be washed.
It takes a bit of practice.
And she must avoid the grumpy neighbours.
Indian one-horned rhinos don't like company.
Even the mud is quite a challenge for little legs.
But a much graver danger is approaching.
The monsoon is about to deliver a devastating blow.
The rains have been exceptionally heavy this year
and the Brahmaputra has burst her banks, flooding the plains.
The National Park is fast disappearing.
The elephants must escape.
Small creatures are flushed from the undergrowth.
But they have nowhere else to go.
The floods show no mercy.
The park is now beneath five metres of water
too deep even for elephants.
They must reach the safety of the hills.
Not even water buffalo can survive in this much water.
Solid ground
but this is no place for elephants.
Many animals have died making this crossing.
Hog deer are nimble. But the elephants must wait.
It's still a long way to the hills
and the herd is now outside the protection of the Park.
Thousands of people have had to leave their homes.
It's a national disaster.
Everywhere, people and animals are fleeing the rising waters
and when their paths cross, neither is safe.
A lone bull elephant is desperate for dry land.
But the villagers are afraid for their houses and their lives.
He'll have to seek sanctuary elsewhere.
The hills.
They've all survived.
For this youngster it's been a dramatic awakening to the terrifying power of the monsoon.
As fast as they rose, the floods recede.
It's a good time for scavengers.
Griffon vultures have found a dead rhino.
The stench is overpowering.
But this tiger has sniffed out an opportunity.
Why waste energy hunting when such a feast is here for the taking?
He has strong jaws and a strong stomach.
Though it can be devastating, the monsoon is also a provider.
And it is about to make its greatest gift.
As the waters recede, they leave everything coated in fine silt.
Like a sprinkling of magic dust, it is this that creates fertility and new life.
Kaziranga's elephant grass grows to over five metres.
All along the Brahmaputra, it's the same story.
Downstream, in Bangladesh
monsoon floods cover up to 70 percent of the entire country.
But here the Brahmaputra joins the Ganges to create some of the most fertile soils on Earth.
In places the silt lies over half a mile deep.
By October, the days are shortening
the air cools, and the monsoon rains come to an end.
In Cambodia, Tonle Sap lake is emptying again, and fishermen face six months of drought.
Tola has been fishing on the River Sap every day for the past few months.
But with such a vast area for the fish to hide, their catches have been modest.
He has a growing family to feed through the dry months ahead.
So they preserve the catch by making prahok, a kind of fish paste.
It helps but it won't be enough.
But the monsoon has a final parting gift for those with the ingenuity to grasp it.
Falling water levels trigger a mass migration.
Millions of fish flee down the Sap river from the shrinking lake.
The challenge is how to catch them.
Enormous nets are erected for this one fleeting event.
Tola has signed up to join one of the fishing crews.
But with many channels, no one knows when or where the fish will run.
Each crew gambles on one channel or another.
Tola must hope he has joined the right team.
They're about to bring up their first haul.
Will it be feast or famine?
A tonne of fish.
And every hour another tonne is swept into the net.
In all, over 30,000 tonnes of fish are hauled from the Sap river each year.
It's the peak catch in the Mekong, the biggest freshwater fishery in the world.
It's so important for Cambodia, that their word for fish is also their name for money.
For Tola and his family, the monsoon has finally delivered.
The rains that were blown in from the ocean five months ago
finish their journey back where they started.
The waters of the Brahmaputra flow into the largest river delta on Earth.
Plumes of sediment wash hundreds of miles out to sea
where they seed one final monsoon bonanza.
Sperm whales.
The world's largest-toothed predators, they eat squid and fish.
Prey that has grown fat in nutrient-rich waters, brought by the monsoon.
But even sperm whales are dwarfed by the largest animal that's ever lived.
This is the blue whale.
And the only place on Earth that they can be seen year-round
is here, in the waters around Sri Lanka.
Waters that are fertile thanks to the monsoon.
The destroyer and giver of life
from tiny mosquitoes to the giants of the deep.
In this episode, the monsoon team filmed some of India’s most dangerous animals
as they struggled to survive the deluge.
From the elephant, to the mosquito.
And each presented extraordinary challenges.
Cameraman Sandesh Kadur has been filming India's wildlife for more than 10 years.
Wow, did you see that?
In the mayhem of a rising flood, anything can happen.
Run, run.
Now, his mission is to capture the moment the rising floods push elephants out of their world
and into ours.
This is one of the busiest highways in India.
When animals get to the highway, this is when they meet their biggest threat.
The road borders Kaziranga National park.
During a big flood, elephants could cross it anywhere at anytime.
As a cameraman it's really tricky to figure out where exactly to be.
What I've got to do is tap into the network
and my network are the forest guards at the anti-poaching camps throughout the park.
Thank you.
There's no sign of them yet, but with the water rising fast, it won't be long.
Right at the other end of the scale
the team want to film an animal even more dangerous than elephants or tigers.
The carriers of malaria.
Mosquitoes. Being hit by rain.
But the laws of physics make it impossible to film something so small and fast in the wild.
So for once in the series, a story had to be filmed outside the monsoon region.
In the UK, the monsoon team obtained safe, disease-free specimens
a lab for confining the insects
and advice from an insect flight scientist
whose research helped to reveal how mosquitoes survive raindrop collision.
Imagine running and jumping...
...off a cliff and a boulder already in freefall smacking you.
That's about what it's like, it's incredible that they can just fly away easily.
First, they have to create droplets of just the right size and speed.
We want to simulate an environment that's as close to natural rain as we can.
So this is a lot more difficult than you think from the set up.
And we're just trying to get a drop of water to fall in the same place each time
in the same plane of focus, and even that is proving quite tricky.
A high-speed camera slows the drop 40 times
but it's not enough.
To give more falling distance on screen, Jon turns his camera on its side.
Just filming a droplet is proving hard enough
even without the mosquitoes!
Wow, look at that, it was not this high just yesterday.
In Kaziranga, it looks like a record flood year
and the whole park will soon be under water.
So, probably by tomorrow morning
I think all the animals are going to be pushed towards the highway.
Back in the lab, water is flowing steadily
and it's time at last for the mosquitoes to take centre stage.
Awesome, lets give it a go. Get some out and put them on the set.
Using a tube Andrew sucks up the cast.
But all this waiting seems to have given them stage fright.
We're not going to get any mozzies hit by raindrops unless they fly about a bit more.
The cast are hungry for blood
so giving them a taste of Andrew's warm human breath gets them excited.
Oh, I thought I saw something then, I've just pressed the trigger.
Oh, just misses. Wow. - Dodged one.
But getting a direct hit is clearly going to take patience.
It's a 5am start for Sandesh.
There might be another herd further up the road.
We'd better hurry up.
We just found out that one herd of elephants have already crossed
and I don't want to miss this herd.
The morning traffic is a nightmare.
And then we've got some right on the highway right now.
We've just missed it.
Back in the lab
they're also having near misses.
Hundreds of them!
Oh, there, got it.
Ok. Right. Let's play this.
Oh, there's the drop.
Go on. Yes!
Fantastic. - Look at that!
You see that, there, he 's probably experiencing 100 Gs when he gets hit by that drop.
It's incredible that they can just fly away.
And thanks to this extraordinary discovery, and a backdrop filmed in India
a glimpse into nature, as never seen before.
Sandesh is looking for another herd.
We've just got information that a herd of elephants are in the shade of these trees.
Guards think that the elephants are moving up there towards the highway.
There are elephants behind us so we better be very careful. Watch our backs.
They are crossing on the edge of the road.
Look at that, they're so nervous.
It's amazing there's not been traffic on this road for such a long time.
And that's when they try to cross.
And then there's heavy traffic coming in.
Finally, we've got the elephants crossing the highway.
I can't believe it's taken us this long to get this shot.
It just goes to show how important it is to be at the right place at the right time.
Next time...
the other side of the Monsoon.
The rains have long gone. Now the winds that blow are bone dry.
But nature's response is spectacular
as animals and humans alike battle to overcome the drought.
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll January 2017
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll Released on www.Addic7ed.com