Khublei Khasi Hills - Shillong Trip report, October 2010

Hi,

The long awaited trip in which lot of planning had gone through IM, is finally over and I am back in my City of Joy!

First, Khublei (Thanks) to Meghalaya and its people!

I will cover each section in detail but just to give an initial overview of the trip -
1. Day 1 - arrived Guwahati - moved to Shillong
2. Day 2 - local Shillong sight seeing
3. Day 3 - moved to Mawlynnong, local sight seeing, stayed overnight
4. Day 4 - moved to Cherrapunjee, local sight seeing, stayed overnight
5. Day 5 - back to Shillong
6. Day 6 - visited Kamakhya temple on way to Guwahati

Hotels
- Shillong -
# Day 1,2 - stayed at Pegasus Crown in Police Bazar
# Day5 - stayed at Pinewood Ashok

- Mawlynnong -
Mawlynnong Eco-Guest House

- Cherrapunjee -
Cherra Holiday Resort

Transport
For the entire trip, I had contacted Mr. Pradip Modak (he came highly reccommended in many travel forums).If any one needs his number, PM me.
Cost:
------
1. Guwahati rail station -> Shillong - Rs. 1100/-
2. Shillong sight seeing - Rs. 1500
3. Mawlynnong and Cherra sight seeing + night stay - Rs. 5300/-
4. Shillong to Guwahati airport via Kamakhya mandir- Rs. 1800/-

Now I will start by each place I visited. So lets start with Shillong!

Shillong
Day 1:
We reached Guwahati @4.30 am on day 1 and Pradip's brother Bimal was suppossed to receive us at Guwahati rail station. But surprise galore,Bimal didnt turn

up nor he answered to our calls. Ultimately on Pradip's advice, we came to Paltan Bazar and I hired an Indigo to Shillong.
The journey time is about 3 hrs early morning and might take more if there is traffic on NH41 as from Jorabat, NH41 is two lane only.
The first evening we roamed around Police Bazar area only looking for places to eat and shop as our hotel Pegasus Crown was right in the same area.

Day 2:
It was for Shillong local sightseeing and we did see a lot of places like Sweet Falls, Lady Hyde Park, Shillong Peak, Elephanta Falls, Umium lake etc.
We had lunch at the lake-view resturant of Ri Kynjai, a lavish resort on the Umium lake. Food wasnt that great and worth the price but the view from the open

resturant was awesome.

Mawlynnong
Day 3:
We checked out late from Shillong, so it took us around 3.5 hrs to reach Mawlynnong. The road condition wasnt good at
most of the places, so although the scape beauty was fascinating, the journey was tiring.

Mawlynnong truly stands by its title of the "cleanest village in Asia" and also might be one of the most flowery villages at the same time.
But the real surprise was the bamboo hut hanging on the hill slope and supported by only logs! We didnt' expect such a thing, so it was a wild shock for us.
We were at the small hut and the way from ground to the bamboo hut was through a manke-shift bamboo bridge which ended in our balcony (yes!) and in front was

nothing but dense forest and you could hear a stream flowing by, some where below.

There was also many kinds of insects, so they had provided mosquito net but still it was pretty scary and adventurous at the same time!
The bathroom was separate and it was squeaky clean with all modern amenities!

Once we got over the initial shock, we romaed across the village and Pradip guided us. He seemed to know most of the people there.
We had early dinner which was really tasty amde by a local Khasi villager.
And there after once back in room, there was nothing but silence only disrupted by sounds of various insects.
And we slept with clouds bursting over head and we, going to sleep, thinking if the hut would withstand such rain!

If you are really eager to go back to nature, then only opt for this place!

But for us, once the feeling had sunk, we actually enjoyed this experience to the fullest!

Cherra
Day 4:
We left Mawlynnong just after breakfast as we were excited to visit the single root bridge @Riwai village just outside Mawlynnong.
We had to go down around 400 mts through shallow stone-based path and when it ended, we were awestruck seeing how the roots of a tree actually formed a

bridge across the stream. We walked to the other end but our all senses seemed to numb by this natural marvel. The way up was although very tiring but the

mere images of the living root bridges gave us all the enthusiasm to cover the rest!

This is the MUST SEE marvel which is unique to Meghalaya!

There after we drove a long distance through wonderful laid roads through a beautiful landscape dotted by Pine trees and after reaching Cherra, we visited

the Mawsmai caves.
Although the journey through the cave was really exhilarating but almost 60-70 people in the cave at the same time, was scary enough as it became

suffocating.
From there we went to the longest natural Shiva-linga rock just in front of the Bangladesh plains! You really need to see this to believe that huge

cylindrical rock, not joined to any hills, just standing all by its own and just beneath it there lies the plains of Bangla!
Mesmerizing to say the least.

After this, we started for Cherra resort and future travellers please keep in mind that although the Cherra resort is the best place to stay in Cherrapunjee,

yet it is actually around 18 kms from Cherra town and on top of a hill. So if you are going to stay there for one night, a lot of time will go in reaching

and returning from the Cherra resort.

But we didnt mind this and we were hugely satisfied by the undying efforts of Mr. D P Rayen and his staff at Cherra resort for the awesome hosiptality they

extend to their guests.
The resort has wonderful rooms with ckeaniness being supreme in each and every sphere and just in front of the resort is an open area where you can sit and

relax and see the nieghbouring village on another mountain or the Bangladesh plains dotted by lights at night.
The resort also arranges for bonfire every evening, followed up by local Khasi boys performing music to entertain you.

So Cherra resort, you are THE place in Cherrapunjee.

Shillong
Day 5:

We started early morning as we wanted to see the Nohkalikai falls along with the offbeat Denthle falls.
Pradeep actually took us for the second one and both the falls were just fascinating!
We reached Shillong and went to Pinewood for the last night. We shopped and dined and didnt want to go back to sleep leaving the most wonderful memories of

Khasi hills and its people behind!

Dining
In Shillong, we dined at City Dhaba resturant, few minutes walk uphill from Police Bazar and they serve excellent Oriental as well as Indian dishes.
We also went to Bamboo hut (near High Court) for lunch and it was also pretty nice.

For snacks, please do try out the jalebis at Delhi Mistan Bhandar.
For Bengali food, Baba's dhaba (on G S Road) and Suruchi (next to M T C ) are the recommended ones.
For coffee and burgers, you can visit Bread Cafe on G S Road.
ded
Lastly, I must mention about Mr. Pradip Modak for the excellent guidance he provided during the entire trip. He is a wonderful person who actually lets you

know about the places you visit and its history and you also get to hear popular stories which acts as an excellent time-pass during the long travelling

hours!

This trip, in which went hours in planning in selecting the places and charting the routes, is the most rejuvenating one we had in a long time.
We thanks IMers for helping us during the planning stage and please let me know if you all have any specific queries.

But to end, Khublei Shibun Khasi Hills!

nice report .. where are the pcitures

Thanks for the post.It was very informative and beautifully described.I am planning to go to Shillong for 5 days on 26 Jan.Could you provide me the number of Pradeep Modak.it will be very helpful.How will be the weather there in January?

@joydeep_ju_it, I am not able to send PM to you. Most probably you have disabled it. I am posting Pradeep's no here - 09863087418. You can tell him my name Rahul - i visited after the pujas to shillong
Mods, if posting number is not allowed, you can remove this particular post.

Finally (its too late but still...) uploaded in members gallery:
Shillong trip photos at IndiaMike

hi ,
can shillong be visited in the monsoons?
i mean can we visit shillong+cherra in early september?
pls advise.

Khublei, I've just been to the khasi hills and the jaintia hills and those places are great. I was at the budget level so I often stayed in the inspection bungalows (not good) and circuit houses (big with arm chairs, hot water, tv, heater for only R100).

I was there in december and so some of the countryside looked like my neighbouring scotland which was strange. It's very cold at night, I'm currently wearing all my clothes in bed! I am travelling the area on motorbike as part of a 7 sisters exploration and I recommend using a bike as i've seen hardly any buses on the roads in khasi hills or jaintia hills and it has always been the case that the scenery on the way has been far more interesting than the actual places you stay. That is even more the case here in the jaintia hills as it's a coal mining area so the settlements are particularly grim! I have come here to try and find the caves and waterfalls which is proving a hard task due to lack of information and lack of local knowledge.

I found two great caves (actually it's one huge cave with 2 entrances) in Lumshnong and have recorded the GPS track to get there which i will post when i get back home.

The food is very good in Meghalaya which surprises me but the availability of beef and pork and well-made chinese including steamed buns filled with pork and onion makes me very happy. Strangely i havent found mutton though.


Nick

Did you use a shared cab or did you have the whole cab to yourself. I need a sumo to get to Shillong from Guwahati Airport and I am wondering how much they will charge. I still have plenty of time to plan though.

@hashens : May i request you not to quote the original text of such a long and wonderful TL while posting your question , it degrade the readablity of the log.

@royzlife : Nice TL , a few pics would had added much more flavour on this report. Thanks for sharing.

I got Pradip's reference too, im glad u had a great experience with him now for me its an easy decision since we are quite a few friends in this journey i dont afford to spoil it..

You can safely trust him. I am still in touch with him and had referred number of friends, all were very happy!

Excellent Post royzlife! Very informative and so much to the point. Thanks a lot. Enjoyed going through! cheers!

Dear Sir,

Pl send me Mr. Pradip Modak's no.

Ph no.s of of Hotel at Shillong and resort at Cherrapunji.

Regards,

Arijit Ghosh

As this thread was there having a trip report, I'm not starting a new one.. hope none will mind!

We just came back from our tour to Meghalaya today. It was a nice trip and a good refreshment getting away from everyday’s life. Trying to write down the first travel blog here.
27March:
We started early (around 6:30 AM) towards Dumdum airport. The new look of domestic terminal was impressive but it needs more maintenance. The Spicejet flight took off timely at 8:15 AM and we reached Guwahati airport in 1 hour. I enjoyed first view of Bangladesh from window side seat. We collected luggage and proceed towards exit gate with a confusion about how to proceed towards Shillong. We found out some more families also looking for the Meghalaya Tourism office, though it was to open then. After few minutes, a guy came and said the winger will start soon, after the office gets opened and tickets issued. We thought twice and decided to wait for the winger. It cost Rs 350 per seat and the car started at 10:15 AM. 2 for us and another group of 7 people travelled together. The road condition was good, though the stop at Nongpoh was quite long because of infants in the other group. We reached Shillong around 1:40 PM, and was hungry.
As we read very good comments about Suruchi hotel in Shillong, we gave it a try and what a bad try it was!! I strongly suggest not to opt for Suruchi hotel. It might be suitable for only those people who can’t live without pure bangali food “bhat-dal-bhaja-mach”, but if you’re ok with any kind of good food please don’t go there!! There are multiple good and cost effective food joints available in Shillong.
We tried to forget the lunch and proceed further. We hired a cab from police bazaar to go to Sohra and on way to Mawphlang Sacred Groove. The road condition was very good, and we saw sceneries like European countryside after crossing Shillong city. We reached Mawphlang and took a guided tour for about 1.5 hours(costed Rs 200). There are some very old trees and most of the trees are covered with Orchids. But because it is end of winter, no Orchid flower was visible. The guide also told that the look is much nice during season (i.e. from June – September). And this is what we heard from almost all guides and hotel people throughout our trip - in season, everything is much greater and better looking. Frankly to say, this made me a bit upset!
We started towards Sohra around 5 PM and driver was driving like ‘no-break-in-car’. It’s good that we reached Sohra alive On way towards Sohra, it was getting dark and we saw fullmoon rise over Khashi hills... that was a splendid experience we had. We reached Coniferous resort around 7 PM and took rest for the day.

28March:

We had our breakfast early around 7:45 AM. The hotel owner Ila arranged a cab for going to the starting point of Double Decker Living root bridge last night and the driver came timely. We reached the starting point of trek at 8:30 AM and started the trek.
Now, this is something I’ll like to give details. It’s a total of 3500 stairs (yes, I’m not lying) to reach the double decker bridge and the same 3500 stairs to be back. We took no guide as Ila suggested we would be able to do it without. I’m not sure whether guides know any shortcut or easier route, if yes than I’ve to say we took a wrong decision.
The first 1950(approx) stairs are downwards, the first phase it’s easier, but as it goes it becomes steeper and steeper. Total concrete stairs make it extremely hard for your feet, even while going down legs shiver and hard to keep balance. The stairs are very narrow (ladies can’t place their full feet in a stair, forget about gents foot) and very high. These make life miserable. It goes through the jungle of Bay Leaves, with sweet smell all over (I collected some bay leaves too). So, at end of these many stairs, you’ll get a small board, showing the left side way as the way towards Double Decker living root bridge. A village is there with a small store. From there, you’ll find ups and downs, some old stairs and some big stone steps. Then at a point we’ll get confused about where to go as the route gets divided into 2, but good thing was we knew that we needed to cross 2 steel suspension bridges. My hubby inspected and found out the right side route is going towards nearby steel bridge. Crossing the steel bridge was an event. It started shaking like anything when we 2 were at middle of it. I was frightened and at time I thought to go back. Then though for going back, I need to cover the same route I passed, and then progressed towards the other end. Again some stony road and old stairs, I was feeling dehydrated and probably pulse rate also had fallen down. After completing the 1950 downward steps my health was not permitting though I remembered about my earlier trek experiences and went on going by taking short rests on way. Then came the second suspension steel bridge. The condition of this one was worse than the first one but because of presence of a concrete pillar in between (which divided this into 2 parts), we faced much lesser shaking there. The route was still going on, after sometime we saw a single root bridge on our way... I was really happy to see this out-of-the-world thing but was not in a condition to move on... was thinking about my hubby what he would do if I reach a totally non-walking condition. It took me long to cross the single bridge and the small shop of Nongriat. I found the shop great, we rested there for about half an hour, had plenty of water and hot tea. The double decker was visible from there. After taking much needed rest, we went till double decker and what an amazing creation by nature and human!!! We were there for some 10/15 minutes and then started returning at 12:30 PM as we were already late. While returning the first half till the village (before starting of the horrible stairs), we were quite uplifted in spirit and covered that part in one hour. We were very very hungry by then but could not find any food apart from Lays chips in the small store. We had a snacks break and had nuts(carried by us), chips and water!! Then we started the toughest part, climbing up those steep stairs. We started counting and took rest after covering every 100 steps and sometimes fewer. No doubt it was tough.. I’ve done trekking in Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand and walked for 11/12 km a day, but that can’t be compared with this 3+3 = 6 km trek. We were planning about the next to-do’s after returning hotel room. Every route has an end; likewise out of my disbelief we reached the parking lot at 3:45 PM. SO IT TOOK 7 HOURS 15 MINUTES!!!!
We had good lunch at Cherrapunji Holiday Resort and then went to Cherrapunji Ramkrishna Mission, which I liked very much. Very hard for us to walk but we listened the evening aarti, at end of it we came back to Hotel.
Here are the steps we did to cure our foot. These 3 steps we did each day for next 3 days, though the pain is still be completely cured (believe it or not, today is Tuesday and We trekked on last Thursday). The pain was maximum on next day and Saturday too.
1. Had hot water(indeed very hot almost boiling) therapy for 15/20 minutes.
2. Messaged with good painkinng gel
3. Used Volini spray


I’d say this trek is absolutely not for all tourists. Please go trekking in this route only if:
1. You’re really interested in trekking. Keeping in mind the destination is not really very much beautiful and out of the world. It’s definitely wonderful, also the natural swimming pools under 2nd steel bridge was gorgeous.
2. You have some good trekking experience earlier. Don’t make it your first trek; else you’ll lose all interest in trekking itself.
3. You have time in hand and not planning for any sightseeing for the same day. I agree that I’m not very fit and trim person, but I think any normal person will take at least 6.5 hours to complete this. The severe pain next few days will follow.
4. Though everybody suggested that summer and Monsoon is the proper season, I’m bit doubtful about that at least for this trekking. The area is full of greens and it has problem with leeches, so you will not be able to stop anywhere to take rest sitting here and there. Also, the problem of dehydration will be much more during those time.