This is what it’s like to live in Banda, the Indian city where the heat reaches 48 °C during the day and does not drop below 30 °C at night

The light had the intense glow of a summer afternoon. The shadows were getting smaller before breakfast.

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In May, that dusty district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh spent days at the top of an unenviable national ranking: the hottest place in the country.

Temperatures remained between 47ºC y 48°C for more than a week, an extraordinary number even by local standards.

However, what caught the attention was the way in which people adapted.

Banda’s more than two million residents – many of whom depend on agriculture, construction, transportation and other outdoor jobs – They had no choice but to endure the heat, so they reorganized their lives around it.

30 kilometers from the district headquarters, the Atarra vegetable market closed its doors before most cities fully woke up.

The farmers arrived at dawn with tomatoes, pumpkins, chillies, lemons and melons. They wanted to sell their products quickly and get home before the heat intensified.

“Miren to hisl,” said Himanshu, a shopkeeper standing next to boxes of tomatoes. “It’s only 6:15 in the morning, but it feels like 8 to 9 in the morning”.

The heat shortened the useful life of their products as much as it shortened the market day. “A box of tomatoes must be sold today or tomorrow. In this weather, they won’t last”.

Whereas before operations were bustling until the early hours of the morning, with the heat The activity began to fade at 8 in the morning. At 10 in the morning, the market was almost deserted.

Himself reduced schedule governs almost everything in Banda.

Between the incandescent sky and the scorched ground, people do what the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński once observed in another burning African landscape: dedicate their energies to “look for shade and breeze”.

Pappu Verma is a bricklayer who now works from 7 a.m. to noon, and again from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The four hours in between are to wait for the worst of the heat to pass.

“You have to complete 8 hours“, said. “Whether you work continuously under the sun or stop and start, the pay is the same”.

Rest saves you from headaches and heat sickness, but lengthens your day to 12 or 13 hours. If not, he said with a shrug, “What I earn I would spend on medicine”.

Vicious circle

One day last week, around 2 p.m., when the temperature in Banda reached 46°C, three female workers took shelter under a roadside water tanker on a highway bridge over the Ken River, to have lunch under the shadow cast by its chassis.

One of them, Shanti Devi, walks six kilometers to work every morning and six kilometers back.

His lunch consisted of bread with onion, salt and pickles. “If we bring vegetables, they will spoil at noon”he explained.

Then he uttered a phrase that could be the motto of the Banda heat wave.

“The poor cannot afford to worry about the heat”.

His shelter over the Ken was appropriate. The river is at the center of Banda’s fight against the heat.

The researchers claim that Sand mining and groundwater depletion have weakened its ability to cool the surrounding landscape.creating a vicious cycle in which water scarcity and extreme temperatures reinforce each other.

Los economic effects of heat are visible everywhere.

E-rickshaw drivers face afternoons devoid of passengers. Merchants open before dawn and close between noon and 4 p.m. Customers have been reduced by half. Entire towns They take refuge in their homes during the most intense hoursand they only come out again at night.

Mobile phones buzz over and over with government alerts that warn of a strong heat wave. “Stay alert, be cautious“, the messages warn.

Local hospitals are receiving a steady flow of patients.

“Since the heat intensified, we receive between 15 and 20 cases a day, mostly children and the elderly”said K Kumar, chief medical superintendent of the District Women’s Hospital.

“The most common symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and fever.”

Damp heat

Banda’s ordeal is the local expression of a broader trend.

Across India, heat is increasingly coming not only in the form of high temperatures, but also as a combination of heat and humidity which puts greater pressure on the human body.

Climate researchers consider the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which spans much of northern India and includes Uttar Pradesh, to be one of the world’s emerging hotspots for dangerous humid heat.

The population densityabundant humidity and large numbers of outdoor workers combine to create conditions in which even routine work can be risky.

Uttar Pradesh is especially vulnerable due to its huge population exposed to the elements, its reliance on outdoor work and limited access to cooling for millions of households, according to the think tank Climate Trends.

Scientists say that The region’s geographic and development options have combined to make things worse.

Banda is located near the Tropic of Cancera latitude associated with some of the most intense summer heat in the world.

The rivers flow at low altitudes and reveal sand bedsstone and gravel that absorb and radiate heat.

Concrete has replaced vegetation. Tree cover has fallen well below recommended levels.

Research by the Banda University of Agriculture and Technology found that almost one-sixth of the district’s dense forest cover disappeared between 1991 and 2022, largely due to mining and agricultural expansion.

Together, these factors have made Banda increasingly vulnerable to extreme heat.

According to Dinesh Sah, a meteorologist at the university, the district has already recorded temperatures between 48°C and 49°C. In 2024, the mercury reached 49°C on two consecutive days.

But what made this summer’s episode unusual was its persistence.

“For 8 or 9 days, temperatures of 47ºC to 48°C were maintained without interruption,” the expert highlighted. “That’s what’s new”.

Prem Singh, a local farmer, says the annual extreme heat wave in the region is nothing new and is essential for crops. What worries him is its increasing intensity.

He blames declining tree cover, extensive mining, increased use of fossil fuels and the expansion of air conditioning.

“This has made life more difficult for the poor, while the rich have not been as affected.”.

The heat persists long after sunset.

“It seems that mornings and nights no longer exist”Sah said.

At 7 or 8 in the morning it already seems late.

Las Night temperatures remain around 30°C. The result is a population that is never fully refreshed.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle this.”

In the village of Achharaund, 20 km from Banda town, the fight is less about temperature than about water.

A single well supplies much of the village’s usable drinking water. Every day, women line up with buckets under a hot sky.

Kranti Vishwakarma, 18, spends four or five hours fetching water for her home. When there are power outages in the afternoon, relief comes from the shade of a neem tree.

“We do not have refrigerators or air conditioners“, said. “For us, neem trees play that role”.

Nearby, an 80-year-old woman named Chunubadi sat next to a table fan repaired with ropes and improvisations. It barely worked, blowing dry, relentlessly hot air.

“The sweat dries” he said as he watched the blades spin, “but these gusts are hard for an old body to bear”.

Then he made a darker reflection.

“In my 80 years, I have never seen heat like this. Older people die in extreme cold or heat. I don’t know if I’ll be able to bear this”.

Throughout the village, the animals had their own way.

Around noon, dozens of buffaloes were standing in a pond.

Some shepherds were waiting for them to come out.

There we met Rameshwar Yadav, 60, a former private school teacher who now makes a living by rearing buffaloes.

Curiously, he was dressed in thick clothing, more suitable for winter than a 46°C summer day, and had a shawl wrapped around his head.

““We wear thick clothing because it does not allow the heat of the sun to reach the body.”he explained.

“The thick fabric protects us from the sun and hot winds. Yes, it makes us sweat, but it also prevents us from getting sick”.

Like everyone else in Banda, Yadav had adapted. But adaptation and relief are not the same.

A disturbance in the west eventually caused dust storms and rain. Temperatures fell between 8 and 9 degrees. The district breathed again.

But the respite was temporary.

The routines that Banda residents have developed (starting work before dawn, retiring home at midday, seeking shade wherever they can find it) are increasingly becoming needs rather than adaptations.

Risk of death

Research by Piyush Narang and Ashok Gadgil of the University of California at Berkeley estimates that more than 8,000 additional deaths during an intense five-day heat wave, longer than many other states in India.

The burden falls disproportionately on the elderly, people who work outdoors, and households that lack reliable access to cooling.

However, Banda residents seem less alarmed than many climate scientists.

They have lived in heat for generations.

What researchers are concerned about is not that the district is getting hot, but that it is getting hotter, for longer, in a landscape that is losing the trees and water that once helped keep temperatures under control.

The workers who took shelter under a tanker truck on the road had ignored the danger.

“We are used to it,” they said.