If you think Singapore is getting way too hot to bear, scenes of pedestrians getting stuck on a melting road in India will probably change your mind.

While Singapore experienced its highest recorded temperature of 36.7 degrees Celcius in April this year, it is still a far cry from the 51 degrees Celsius recorded in Phalodi, India just last week.

Before this, India’s previous national high was 50.6 degrees in 1956.

The weather has gotten so hot that there has been a spike in cases of dehydration and heat stroke. And for the people in some states, the heatwave is so bad that roads have started to melt, trapping pedestrians who are trying to walk in the sweltering heat.

Roads melt as India heatwave breaks record at 51 degrees

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

Reuters, AFP

A video uploaded by India’s NDTV on YouTube shows pedestrians struggling to cross busy streets as their footwear became stuck to the road. One man whose slipper got stuck to the road had to hop back on to the busy road just to retrieve his slipper because the ground was too hot to walk barefoot on.

In the video, various other people can also be seen getting stuck while crossing roads, and one particular road was littered with different types of footwear left behind by pedestrians.

According to a report by Reuters, May and June are India’s hottest months, but thunderstorms usually help to alleviate some of the heat. However, the showers are just not coming, leading to higher-than-ever temperatures.

B.P. Yadav, head of the national weather forecasting centre of the India Meteorological Department told the news agency that the higher temperatures could be caused by global warming.

“We are praying to the gods for an early monsoon so that people get some relief, as the heat has taken a toll on our bodies,” a resident from the northern industrial city of Kanpurwas quoted as saying.

ljessica@sph.com.sg

For weather updates from AsiaOne, click here:

A two-car collision in Australia has left at least five Singaporeans injured – with two of them in critical condition.

The incident happened on Tuesday (May 24) in Laharum, which is almost 300km away from Melbourne. The town is also not too far from a popular tourist spot, Grampians National Park.

A police spokesperson told Australian newspaper Wimmera Mail-Times that all of the casualties were Singapore nationals.

The collision took place at the junction of Wonwondah-Dadwell Bridge Road and Northern Grampians Road at about 4.20pm, according to the report. Three female passengers, all aged 23, seated in the rear were reportedly injured in the crash. At least one of them suffered head, chest as well as spinal injuries. She was airflown to Melbourne’s The Alfred hospital and is currently in “critical condition”, said the report.

Another female victim was also flown by air ambulance to Melbourne to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in critical condition. A spokesman from Ambulance Victoria told local media that the victim suffered head and leg injuries.

The last female passenger who sat in the rear seat was taken to hospital in stable condition but had neck and back injuries.

Both the 24-year-old male driver and another 23-year-old female in the passenger seat suffered minor injuries, according to the local paper.

The driver of the second vehicle, a 24-year-old Australian woman, was uninjured.

“The investigation into the collision is ongoing and anyone who witnessed the incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers,” Victoria police said.

The cause of the crash is still unknown.

ssandrea@sph.com.sg

An Indian man obsessed with setting Guinness world records got 366 flags tattooed on his body and had all his teeth removed so he could put nearly 500 drinking straws and more than 50 burning candles in his mouth.

Har Parkash Rishi, who claims to have set more than 20 records, now calls himself Guinness Rishi.

Born in 1942 in a cinema hall in the capital, New Delhi, Rishi first got into the Guinness Book of World Records in 1990 when, with two friends, he rode a scooter for 1,001 hours.

The passion to get his name in the record book led him to perform some bizarre acts, including delivering a pizza from New Delhi to San Francisco and gulping a bottle of tomato ketchup in less than four minutes.

He even got his family involved – his wife Bimla holds a 1991 record for writing the world’s shortest will: “All to Son”.

While it is the tattoos on his body, more than 500 in all, that brought him fame, Rishi, an auto parts manufacturer by profession, says the toughest one was stuffing the straws in his mouth.

“I am the world record holder of 496 straws in my mouth … For that record, I needed space, I had to remove every tooth so that I could put maximum straws in my mouth,” Rishi told Reuters Television before re-enacting the feat on camera.

He is now getting images of global leaders tattooed on his body to add to images of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Barack Obama, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence movement.