Having never been to Cherrapunji, the wettest place on Earth high up in the hills of northeast India, my notions of it were romantic: swirling clouds, dense mists through which mountain peaks could be discerned and such torrential downpours that the cosiest place was in front of a roaring log fire with one's inamorata.

The reality, according to Binoo K. John's engaging and evocative Under a Cloud, is more banal. True, the landscape is stunningly beautiful, but clothes never dry, books curl if left outside, and all around is permanent mildew, moss and bacteria. And forget the logs - lighting a cigarette is a task, never mind a wet log.

Cherrapunji, perched in the Khasi Hills in Meghalaya, is unique. In the monsoon months of June and July in 2002, the whole of northwest India recorded 131.7mm of rain. In just one day in July, Cherrapunji recorded 479.2mm. While large parts of India shrivel up from droughts, the rain never stops in Cherrapunji. The British, who sent battalions of missionaries to the northeast to set up schools (the region is predominantly Christian), must have felt at home amid the grey skies and sunless days.

John quotes liberally from gazetteers and 19th-century accounts to provide a historical perspective. A Catholic missionary, for example, seemed to be at his wit's end over the dampness. 'Tables, chairs, benches must be fixed with bolts, otherwise they fall to pieces. Iron bolts cannot be used because they rust and become loose. It is the same with nails. Shoe nails must be made of wood! Salt melts and medicines spoil. Flour and rice become lumpy unless they are closed in airtight containers and kept in a heated room.'

John relates how the missionary schools have left a tremendously useful legacy in that the people of the region speak English fluently. Nevertheless, the jostling for influence is amazing. There are schools with Catholics, Hindus and Protestants battling for souls. He found families where some siblings were Christian and others Hindu.

John's accounts of the matrilinear society of the region is fascinating. It's the women who rule the roost here. The husband has to get to permission to visit his wife, who stays with her mother, a formidable force not to be messed with. Property is usually equally divided among the daughters although in some tribes, it all goes to the youngest daughter.

The downside of this system is that it kills male enterprise. Cherrapunji Man drinks excessively, partly because the poor fellow lives alone and has no family to go home to.

Another oddity is that during the summer there's a water shortage. There are no methods of storing the downpour, so all the rain rushes down the hills onto the plains of neighbouring Bangladesh. In the summer, women can be seen carrying water pitchers for kilometres.

Travel writing in India is an under-mined genre. John made a well-received debut in 1999 with The Curry Coast: Travels in Malabar 500 Years After Vasco de Gama.