Twice a year the Earth stands perfectly upright on its axis. Then the sun's rays fall perpendicularly on the equator and day and night are of equal length. In the journey of time, today, 23 September, is one of those special days, which can be called the autumn equinox.

Imagine this yellow mark as an invisible thread wrapped around the Earth: the equator. It crosses the land of at least 14 countries in the world, including Colombia, Brazil, Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, the Maldives and Indonesia. Among them, the East African country of Uganda seems to announce the equator's presence most firmly.

To sense the division made by this invisible line, you have to turn to science, and the calculation is exact. South of the equator, a whirl of water turns anticlockwise, to the left; to the north it turns clockwise, to the right.

On 21 March and 23 September the sun's rays fall perpendicularly on the Earth, so day and night are equal everywhere. Uganda in East Africa stays within such a reckoning all year round. Because of the equator, the temperature hardly rises or falls, and there is no excess of sun, rain or cold.

Life is wrapped in a strange coolness all year, which is why Uganda attracts tourists from all over the world.

If someone stands on the equator line on the afternoon of this day, their body casts no shadow, because the sun is then directly overhead. Standing at the centre of the equator, one feels a little shiver for no reason.

That is because, whatever your weight, for scientific reasons it is only here that you lose three per cent of your body weight.

The equator is one of the great discoveries of the cosmic mystery, from which the Earth, the sun and the movement and nature of all countries can be told apart. That is why so many tourists gather in Uganda around the equator.

Source: Shykh Seraj. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.