India is a vast country with diverse terrain from the plains of Ganges valley and high mountains like the Himalayas. Because of wide variety of terrain, the climatic condition also varies. The climate (मौसम – Mausam) could be extremely  (अत्यंत – atiyant) warm (गर्म – garm) in one region to extremely cold (ठंडा – thanda) in another.

The climate in India could be divided into at least 6 sub-climates and micro-climates which include the desert with hot climate in northwest, permanent snowfields in north, tropical coast lands in south and southwest, fertile and intensively cultivated fields in the northeast.

According to India Meteorological Department, India has four climatic seasons and witness winter from December and April , summer from April to June or July (according to region), a rainy monsoon from June or July to September and a post-monsoon period from October to December. However, the Himalayan states have 2 additional seasons which are autumn and spring. According to Hindu calender, there are 6 seasons which are spring (vasanta), summer (ग्रीष्म – grīṣma), monsoon season (वर्षा – varṣā), early autumn (शरद – śarada), late autumn (हेमंत – hemanta), and winter (शीत – śiśira).

Because of the Himalayas (हिमालय) and the Hindu Kush (हिन्दू कुश) mountains range in Pakistan, the cold wind from Central Asia are blocked from entering into India and keeping the Indian sub-continent (भारतीय उप महाद्वीप) warmer as compared to the country at similar latitude (अक्षांश).

Another important feature of Indian climate is Asiatic monsoon, in which the wind flows in one direction, southwest throughout India during a period in a year (वर्ष – varsha) and reverses the direction (दिशा – disha) of flow (प्रवाह – pravah) to northeast at another time in a year. During June to September period, the monsoon brings rain bearing winds from the southwest. This period is the most humid (नम – nam) in a year. The monsoon wind reach south India (दक्षिण भारत) around end of May or June and it takes around 6 weeks for the wind to move to the north Indian parts.  In some of the part, monsoon could bring heavy rains and in another no rain at all. People especially farmers usually expect monsoon to come on time and bring an adequate amount of rain. Heavy or no rain monsoon could destroy entire standing crops in the regions where no irrigation (सिंचाई – Sinchei) system is in place.