NOTHING LETS YOU KNOW it's raining bulls and buffaloes like a sheet-metal roof outside your hotel-room window. Indians say the monsoon is the best weather for sleeping, but on my second night in the mountain town of Munnar, in the southern state of Kerala, I'm up and down constantly. Mostly this is from excitement—the monsoon, finally!—but Indian mattresses are also a factor. Spend a few weeks flopping around on one and you'll understand why they had to invent yoga here.

"It is raining bulls and buffaloes!" my driver, nature guide, and new best friend, Baiju, says when he greets me in the morning. "Now you are happy."

At the nadir of my monthlong monsoon quest, under Indian skies as sunny as the Disney Channel, I came across Baiju in the Kerala seaside town of Cochin. For the first day or two he was a rock of courtesy and professionalism, all "Yes, sir" and "Let me carry that, sir" and "Don't purchase tea in that shop, sir—it is known to be operated by a criminal element." Now that he's gotten comfortable around me, his more local tendencies have begun to flower.

An amateur photographer, Baiju is even more rabid for high-impact monsoon photos than I am. In a windshield-fogging deluge, approaching a corner so flooded that it has its own whitecaps, he points at an old woman making her way up the side of the road with a sack of vegetables.

"Get your camera ready!" he says, punching the gas and rocking the steering wheel like a six-year-old in a video arcade. "Watch the spray when we pass her!"

Baiju downshifts the white Ambassador sedan, turns up the volume on Best of Bollywood Duets, and veers for the woman like a cornerback closing in on a gimpy receiver.

"No, hey, Baiju, that's not necessary. I don't think we should—"

"You not like? It's no problem! She won't mind!"

"No! I not like!"

"Great picture!"

We plow into the mini-lake and a wall of brown water—backed-up sewers are a big problem during the monsoon—explodes ten feet into the air. I click a few shots through the window because… well, because who doesn't love seeing a sheet of water suspended in mid­air? The old lady disappears inside the curl like a North Shore pro. Baiju speeds on, crazy for more prey, while BB's of rain pop like firecrackers across the hood of the car.

That's one thing about the monsoon: Even with a roof over your head, you never really escape it. If you're not outside being relentlessly moisturized, you're getting your socks damp on someone's living-room rug. Like an effective branding campaign, the monsoon is an insidiously pervasive force that seeps into the background of Indian life, sometimes slapping you in the face for not paying attention.