Smoking section.

It's that season again and we've been feeling the effects of Delhi's poor air quality. It’s not ever terribly great but its downright miserable during “pollution season” (roughly October to February). It’s getting to us. I’m not not convinced that a month-long string of minor illness after minor illness can’t be tied back to my body not being able to catch a break. And now Joe, Nicolas and I are all battling lingering coughs long after they should have cleared up.

We're currently sitting in the "hazardous" air quality range and it's likely to get worse overnight. At 6pm, Joe pulled a AQI of 771 off of aqicn.org. (Context: AQIs of 150 usually trigger stay-at-home suggestions in the States.)

Delhi's experiencing a cold snap. Now, a girl from Minnesota doesn't find lows like 8-10 C terribly cold but most houses here are made from brick with heating systems that aren’t great. And that's for the folks who have it good. Our neighbors who live under the underpass a couple blocks away are tending small fires to ward off whatever chill they can.

Add in Lohri, a festival celebrated with bonfires tonight/tomorrow, and I'm fully expecting to wake up mid-sleep to a smokey apartment even with four embassy-provided air purifiers doing their thing. (It'll be temporary. The air purifiers do work and typically reduce our indoor exposure by 80-90% compared to outside.)

Of course, it's not just the fires. It's the pollution that mixes with fog to make a sludge that's no fun to breathe. And climate patterns that compound it all.

I don’t mean to whine, but it’s just getting terribly, terribly old.

In the very next semi-painful breath, I have to admit that I’m one of the lucky ones. We will eventually leave Delhi. And hopefully our next post will be somewhere that asking “what’s the AQI?” isn’t part of my daily routine.

But I’d like to think I’ll never take clean air for granted again.