Meghalaya – 10 day trip to the Wettest place on earth.
Meghalaya is an eastern state of India with a population of around 3 million and an area of around 22,430 square kilometres.
Most of the land is covered in lush greenery and the state receives an average rainfall of 12000 mm a year. Its the wettest state in India and “Cherrapunji” holds the record of “Wettest place in the world” in Guinness Book of world records. “Meghalaya” means “Abode of clouds”, which stands to its words as most of the places and villages in this state you will find clouds around you. With so many things to see me and my best friend planned to go visit Meghalaya on a 10-day trip which started from Mumbai to our starting point Guwahati in Assam.
This particular state holds many other records and which was one of the main reasons for our trip, I will tell you about it as we talk about it further. The main purpose of our visit was to see the oldest living root bridges located amidst the thick and bushy forests. These bridges are made from roots of rubber trees and you will see them almost on every river crossing. They are strong and able to handle the rough river water flowing down from the enormous waterfalls. The method of making these bridges is passed onto a new generation by the elderly’s of the family, so they can make more bridges for the people of each village.
There are two major bridges:
The oldest living root bridge situated in the village Pynursla in the West Jaintia hills.
The double-decker living root bridge – located in the Nongriat village of the East Khasi hills.
There are others but it was difficult to visit them all in the time we had and we also wanted to leave some so we could visit again 🙂
Our itinerary was as follow:
- Day 1: Travel to Shillong early morning and from there we took a local taxi to go to Tyrna village, from this village a steep ascend starts which have around 3500 steps to reach to the bottom of the hill and then again ascend for an hour or so to reach Nogriat. The double-decker bridge is situated in this village near a small waterfall. By the time we reached down, it was almost nightfall and we checked into our local guest house and took some rest from the long trek.
- Day 2: We woke up early morning to see the bridge, it’s very beautiful and quiet during that time as most of the day tourist start arriving and then it becomes very crowded. The same day we trekked further 1 hour into the village and reached the Rainbow falls, the sunlight falling on the water creates a rainbow and that’s where it got its name. It’s only visible during bright sunny days.
- Day 3: We started back to Tyrna village to Cherrapunji. There is a very famous “Nohkalikai” waterfall and it’s one of the tallest in India and it has a legend to its name. It’s very beautiful and worth watching. We spent the rest of the day roaming around Cherrapunji.
- Day 4: We visited the “Seven Sisters waterfalls” and Mawsmai caves. Then we went from there to the “Mawlynong ” village located in the west Jaintia hills. On the way, we visited the oldest living root bridge in Pynursla.
- Day 5: We woke up and had breakfast at the local cafe in the village and went to see the Umngot river. We spent a whole day exploring the river, swimming and visited the surrounding areas.
- Day 6: We spent our morning visiting the local market and walking around the village and just relaxed as we had to start to Mawphlang in the evening. We reached Mawphlang in the late evening, checked in to our guest house Maple pine farm. It’s a beautiful homestay located near a small creek, you have to cross the creek by foot, the water is shallow but very cold.
- Day 7: We went to visit the Sacred Forest and spent a quite amount of day there, the forest holds one rule and that is “Nothing can be taken”. If you take anything from the forest, the legends say that bad things will happen to you. the forest has many beautiful pine trees and you will want to take the pine cones but please don’t.
- Day 8: Next day we went to Mawsymram and Mawlybgna village, we also went to see the river Umkhakoi. There is also a place Lew Luri Lura which according to legend was visited by mythical animals and there are many animal footprints to prove that.
Mawlynong is the cleanest village in Asia, the people here gather together and clean the village every morning. Its located in the West Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya which is also the border to Bangladesh. There are not many food options in the village but it’s calm and quiet and very beautiful to wake up here. There are watchtowers created in the village from where you can see Bangladesh plains.
