Assam Diaries Part 1

I have thought of Assam many times in the past. Assam tea hoardings and ads are thrown at our faces. Assamese people thrive in Bangalore. But the thought of ever actually visiting Assam was always deferred as the distance and cost are huge. 

I had been to Assam, once, in 2015. It was a work trip and hence I didn't pay anything from my pocket. I had been to NIT in Silchar for campus recruitment. 

Finally, we planned a family trip to Assam. Our trip was from 14 May 2022 and we booked the flight tickets a month in advance on the 4th of April itself. Just the flight tickets (Vistara onward flight and Indigo return) cost us Rs 50,000/- for four of us including my 4-year-old daughter. That amounts to Rs 6000/- per person one ticket. 

This is the problem with going to certain places in India. Going to Guwahati will cost you the same as going to Nepal or Maldives as far as flight cost is concerned. Nepal/Maldives ticket charges are the same! Might as well do an international trip at the price of a domestic one. But I am so obsessed with traveling to all states of India, at least once before I die, that we took it with a pinch of salt. 

Of the 8 nights, and 9 days of the trip, we had planned 50% of the duration for Meghalaya. 

Our Vistara flight was at 9:30 a.m. It is a three-hour journey to Guwahati from Bangalore. The first impression of any state always comes from its capital city. As we landed in Guwahati and took the cab to the hotel just 8 km away, on Mirza Road, it felt like a village. Dirty, not developed enough. Rundown houses line the roads, some unfinished, some unpainted, old worn shops, and bad roads. The initial imprint on our minds was one of squalor. Knew right away we would not be able to spend too long here. We would want to get away as fast as we could. 

If Guwahati was not the Gateway to the North East, as it is famously called, we would not even land here. In the future, if we ever have the fortune to visit Arunachal Pradesh. which I truly want to see, Guwahati is only going to be a "cannot avoid" stopover to catch the next flight to Tawang, the capital of AP. 

Here are some of the things I found to be interesting or unique or just different from my city:

      Tea made in a large bowl                           Sugarcane cart 

 

Chicken sold in cane cage on a cycle                Fooding Only!!

The worst aloo paratha of my life eaten in Paltan Bazaar. There are different versions of it - from thick maida to ones deep fried in oil like you fry a puri. Aloo paratha fried like a puri.

That BIG piece of Aloo 

Aloo Paratha - Assamese version

Can you believe our joy when we found idlis in Guwahati? That too butter-soft ones? With yummy chutney? At just Rs 40 per plate? It was a South Indian restaurant in Paltan Bazaar frequented by every Kannadiga, Malayali, Tamilian, Mahashtrian, and Teluguite who were fed up with the puris made of maida.

At the Planetarium, here is what we saw. This, I thought, was completely unfair. No show in Hindi! Not a single one! 

Huge bags! Big enough to carry a child in it! Rs 200/-

 

  

In the picture on the left:

The varieties of tea available in this one shop. Look at the flavors - Mango tea! Choco tea!

In the picture on the right: The price of the different kinds of juice varies according to the quantity given and quantity is clearly mentioned in milliliters!  

So many options in local transport! Plus buses and taxis.

     

The broom: couldn't help but notice the first one

 

common variety

The paintings on the trees near the Dighulpuri Park area reminded me of Kakinada, a district in Andhra Pradesh. It has a road where all the trees are painted beautifully. It is a nice way to beautify a street and add color and life to it. But I am not sure if the paint harms the trees in any way.

The last I heard of this was in the story of Shravan Kumar who carried his parents like this to fulfill their last wish. I can't believe it is still widely used in Northeast. Saw this on a busy street in Guwahati, the capital city.  

The Meghalayan version of aloo paratha with moong dal halwa Rs 75 was so yummy. That gravy is a staple in both Assam and Meghalaya, it accompanies both puris and parathas.

Shillong

In Shillong, Ward's Lake, Lady Hydari Park, Don Bosco Museum, Golf Course, Umiam Lake, and Elephant Falls are some of the must-visit places. And except Don Bosco and the Golf course, all these places are covered in the tour package. 

Ward's Lake

I can never forget this particular spot. One moment, I was asking my children to pose for a picture and the next moment, the phone slipped from my hand, bounced on a rock, and promptly, fell into the water. It was Sathya's phone.

I freaked out! Shit Shit Shit! I shrieked.

I looked up at him and caught an evil grin. I knew what that grin meant: I had to buy him a new phone! 

There was fear written all over mine. No way in hell would I do that! 

I ran as fast as I could to the guard at the gate, told him what happened, and begged him to help.  

When I hurried back, I saw Sathya waving the phone at me! He had retrieved it as the water was shallow and it had not moved from the spot where it had fallen. Phew!   

For a quiet evening in a well-maintained park, this is the place to be.  

There is a boating facility too.  

Now, with these boats, which I have stopped hopping onto, the problem is that out of 3-4 people who sit in the boat, only 1 or 2 peddle and it is usually a man. This means the women spend all their time on the boat clicking, pictures, posing, and enjoying the view while the poor man works his ass off to keep the boat running with his legs. Even if you manage to reach the middle of the lake, you still need extra energy to paddle it back to the starting point. 

With us, it is only Sathya who peddles. Tanvi is lazy, Rutvi is small and I am not interested in peddling. So we have stopped going on boats that require any kind of manual effort to keep them moving. 

Elephant Falls

It is a multi-tiered waterfall, and each of the three drops is a sight to behold. Steps have been made right up to the plunge pool below and the climb is easy. The entry fee is Rs 100 per person now. I believe earlier, that is pre-Covid, it was just Rs 25. They have increased the fee to make good the loss due to lockdown. There was strong objection from everyone to keeping the fee so steep but the authorities stayed put. In most other places in the whole of ML, the entry fee is just Rs 50 or even Rs 30. Very reasonable.

The first drop(below) is completely hidden from view by thick foliage.

The second drop

The third and final drop and plunge pool. You cannot play here. It is strictly view-only fall. 

At all the tourist locations, I realized that Rs 5 Chips packets could not be seen. There were only Rs 20 packets everywhere. Just my bad luck or was it really so? 

For Rs 100, you can dress up in the traditional local Khasi dress. I have dressed in local costumes while in Sikkim and Uttarakhand and Rajasthan. It is fun!

This costume facility is available in Umiam Lake also. But the lady there was so rude I walked away. Here too the woman at the stall had only 2 words in her mouth "Rs 100. Cash" to whoever came and whatever they asked. Without the currency in her hand, she won't even look at you, and once the note is visible, she just roughly puts everything on you. Man, someone please tell these Khasi women to try & be polite and courteous. TRY!

As you drive from Guwahati to Shillong, the first place you will stop at is the beautiful Umiam Lake. It was created by damming the Umiam river. It is a large river and so lovely. 

We met a Kannadiga family there. In fact, we met so many families and big groups of Kannadiga travelers on this trip. Did not find any Malayali!

The view of the Shillong city from atop the Don Bosco Museum Skywalk. 

After the museum visit and lunch, we tried to drive to Police Bazaar where our hotel was.

And boy! Did we go round and round the mulberry bush or what! Shillong city, the capital of Meghalaya, is a small hill city, thickly populated and with numerous shops and buildings placed tightly together. There are so many "no-entry" roads and "one-way" roads and "not allowed" roads and "only one man can walk" roads and "only two-wheeler" roads, that if you take your eyes off the road for even ONE SECOND, you will go in circles. We came to the same spot 3 times and by then we knew every house and hotel on the way except the one we wanted to go to.

Lady Hydari Park

The park was closing at 5 p.m. Everything in ML closes at 5! We reached at 4:30. The lady at the counter waved me to go in without the tickets. And at sharp 4:55 the watchman started blowing the whistle asking everyone to leave the park. 

This is definitely a park for tourists and their restless children. There were so many tourist parents in this park! Their kids were finally having a good time in the kids' play area or simply running around in the open grass or playing hide and seek or shuttle-cock. Hill stations are not for little kids. My little one kept asking for "beach"!!

As you drive through the interiors of Meghalaya, you will notice that there are hardly any liquor shops. Contrast this to the border area of ML and Assam state highway. There are rows and rows of liquor shops. And what are they named? Nothing! Just simply: Shop Open or Open Shop signboards! No shop names. Even the jail-like hole-in-the-wall liquor outlets in Tamil Nadu and Kerala have a name. 

Karnataka is the best place for liquor shopping. The shops are like showrooms, with modernity written all over, well-lit, fancy interiors, latest stock, friendly staff, parking facility, promotional merchandise, and crazy displays. 

Tamil Nadu will make you wonder if you are buying marijuana! Dingy, small shops in some godforsaken place with a huge grill barricade that separates the customer from the shopkeeper. They really make you feel you are buying something illegal!

Black taxis in Cherrapunji and yellow taxis in Shillong. Strangely, we only found ML05 registrations initially. And after many thousand vehicles, we found one that had ML03.

At the Fast-tag counter of ML, we kept waiting for the fast-tag to be read. No one came. We continued to wait. Finally, we reversed the car and halted at the counter window. The lady lifted her head for exactly three seconds, said "Mouse not working" and went right back to doing whatever she was doing. She didn’t say, "Go to the next lane". Nothing. Frowned, Completely indifferent. What the hell!

The signboard read "Fasting is mandatory" instead of fast-tag. Great English for people who speak only English.

We visited ML twice. Monday and Tuesday we had driven with the tour operator in a Swift Dzire. Wednesday we were at Guwahati. Thursday Friday back again in ML. We were not satisfied with what we had experienced or seen with the tour thing. So in Guwahati we hired a Wagon R from Zoomcar for Rs 5000 for 3 days and went back to exploring ML some more. THAT is the draw of ML. The mountains call you! 

When we had traveled by taxi, the driver started the journey at 7:00 in the morning and he reached Umiam Lake at 10:30. 

When we drove, we started the journey at 8:45 and reached the same spot at the same time! 

TWO hours difference! The driver was driving that slow! Even after starting in the wee hours of the morning when there was no traffic, no rain, no stopovers! He took two extra hours to reach the same spot. He was driving at 40 km/hr speed throughout! From 7 a.m to 4:30 p.m when the day ended it was 40 km speed. Calling it snail’s pace would be a hyperbole. Whatever he showed us in two days, we could have easily covered it in a day. We realized this after we drove on our own. Shit! With him, we did not enter Shillong city at all. He only showed the places outside Shillong en route to Cherrapunji. He said the places inside the city, he would show on the return journey tomorrow which of course he didn’t show.

We should have gone for the self-drive option from day one. Like we had done during our Mumbai-Lonavla-Matheran road trip.

Guwahati to Shillong is a 100 km 3 hours drive. And Shillong to Cherrapunji one and a half hours. The entire stretch is a dream ride. Like we in Bangalore go to Mysore, the Guwahati people are lucky to be able to go to Shillong.  

My Impressions of Meghalaya

My earliest memory of the word 'Cherrapunji' was in school. We had a question in our General Knowledge test - "Which place in India gets the highest rainfall"? The answer was Cherrapunji. The spelling was difficult. It was a multiple-choice question. We only had to select the right option. I never learned the spelling.

Cherrapunji, for me, was a far away place, so far away that I could not place it on the map, so far away I could never visit. I don't remember memorizing anything else about this unknown place. Its only marker was the incessant rain that had found this village a spot in our NCERT school textbook. 

I don't remember reading about Meghalaya, the name of the state to which Cherrapunji belonged. But I remember the word 'Cherrapunji' - vividly. It was etched in my memory.

So decades later, when I finally visited the state, what were some of my first impressions of this far-flung state in the extreme northeastern part of India, 3000+ kilometers from Bangalore, my city? As a first-time visitor to the state, was the trip fulfilling and worth the money? 

Here are some of my immediate reactions to Meghalaya:

1. Scenic Beauty: 

The meadows are beautiful. 

Here almost throughout the year the mountains are green due to the rains.

Mangalore, where I am from, is green during the monsoons and then it turns a sad brown and stays various shades of brown for almost 6 to 7 months, until next year, in June, the rain Gods come calling again. Brown is a depressing color. And to have to look at it for nearly two-thirds of the year is grief.

ML is not so. It is immediately pleasing to the eye - every inch of it.

You will find many streams and waterfalls all along the drive. Here are a few I captured:

2. The Roads: The roads are fairly good everywhere in ML. You will not feel exhausted by the long hours spent driving.

I remember my trip to Sikkim in mid-November of 2016. The roads were bad. Or rather, there were no roads at all. Just mud and stones. And huge traffic on them. The journey was tiresome. Most of us suffered from nausea and dizziness. By the time, the vehicle would halt for the night in the hotel, we would rush to the bathroom to shower. All that vomiting and sitting in the cab for hours together, sometimes 4 hours just to move from point A to point B, took a toll on us. 

Fortunately, none of that terrible road experience here in ML. We traveled with our 4-year-old baby and it was smooth sailing all the way.  

3. The Mist: There will be times when you will literally walk or drive through the clouds. One moment, there will be zero visibility and at others, you will not be able to see beyond 50 meters ahead of you. In the next moment, the place turns bright and when you look back, you realize you just passed through a moving cloud. 

Mulayyyangiri Hills in Chikmagalore district in my home state of Karnataka gives a similar experience - of being IN the cloud and then watching the clouds literally move past you or over you. 

If you are from Bangalore and you have not visited Chikmagalore yet, your life is a waste. Sorry, that was harsh but it is true! If you still need to be pushed to visit Chikmagalore, then consider it the poor man's Meghalaya. One more reason? Money, time and effort - all three required in far lesser measure compared to Meghalaya but will give you a near similar experience of ML. 

Have I promoted Chikmagalore enough? It is one place in India I can go again and again and again and yet come back wanting to go back!

4. The Women: Everyone, I tell you, EVERY ONE of those women out there in ML wears lipstick. Each and every woman. Poor, not poor, housewife, working, porter, waiter, tea seller, roadside vendor - EVERYONE. And not just some nude shade or light lipstick. No mam! It is unfailingly dark red lipstick. 

They did not have anything else on them - no bangles, no bindi, no eyeshadow, no kajal, no eyeliner, no dangling earrings, no neck chains. I wonder if they even used compact or foundation. But dark red lipstick was a MUST.

I wondered how these women would feel if they came to the South. Southern Indian women hardly use lipstick on a daily basis or on a 24/7 mode. I remember I started using lipstick at the age of 38! And that too when I worked as a Trainer in a company that sold cosmetics. And that too only at work. Not otherwise. Lipstick was part of an elaborate grooming ritual. 

I am sure all women who travel to ML from TN or KL or AP would first notice the lipstick.  

The ML society is matrilineal. The youngest daughter gets the ancestral property and the son-in-law goes and lives in his wife's house. Most of the restaurants and shops we went to were run by women. From waiters to owners to cooks, all women. 

And they all had a sling bag over their shoulders to keep their money. Every one of them had that bag. 

And every one of them would chew pan/tobacco/gutka or whatever that is. 

5. Men: Not handsome at all. I did not find ONE good-looking man. No height, no physique, no looks. They are all small built. Sathya was a misfit in his 6 feet 3 inches height and 100+ kilos weight. 

They are soft-spoken and gentle, though. That I liked about them.

6. Need More time: We spent 4 days in Meghalaya. 1 day in Shillong and 3 days in Cherrapunji. We explored the various tourist attractions in East Khasi Hills. 

ML has 3 distinct hills - Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo. Each of these hills has a predominant tribe with its own language and cultural practices. 

Khasi Hills is further divided into East and West Khasi. All tour packages majorly cover locations that come under East Khasi such as Wei Sawdong, Mawrynkhang, Nohkalikai, Seven Sisters, Laitlum Canyon, Mawsmai cave, and Mawlynlnong.

Dawki, the place famous for the crystal clear lake, is in West Jaintia Hills. 

As with most hill stations, the distance between two points may look small in kilometers but in terms of time, it takes many hours. For example, Shillong to Cherrapunji is just 50 kms. But takes upwards of 2 hours even with good roads, no hairpin bends, and no nasty curves. 

In 4 days, you can cover only the capital city Shillong and places in East Khasi Hills. You need another week to cover Jaintia, Garo, and West Khasi Hills. And trust me, there is a whole world to explore out there in these hills. 

7. The water makes your hair soft, and easier to untangle. You can remove the knots easily. All the local women had silky, straight hair. It looked like they had straightened it in a parlor. Impeccable. Even a girl I saw in a hut had parlor-type straight hair. 

8. Every nook and corner and crevice is a thing of beauty in Meghalaya.

9. You will hardly find any clinics, hospitals, or medical stores around. And this I had noticed even in Sikkim. The people living close to nature are the healthiest, I guess. In cities, every street will have a pharmacy. Hospitals and clinics in every area. 

So what was the bad part of the trip? The people. Yes, you heard that right. The Khasi women are unbelievably brusque. It unsettles you. 

I don't understand why people in the hotel industry or taxi service business or running restaurants or small eateries or businesses that are entirely dependent on tourists for their survival, treat tourists so poorly. They give off this very negative vibe. Like we are their enemies. Like they don't want us there. Like they are doing us a favor by being in front of us. 

You go to a restaurant to eat and no one bothers to ask you your order. You have to struggle to get their attention. And then, YOU have to ask them,  "what else do you have?". They will just place the first item you ordered and not turn around to look. But they will definitely count the money properly. 

And they all want ONLY cash. Digital payments in other parts of India have created world records in terms of value and volume of transactions but here the concept is unheard of. 

I hate places or people who do not value the very reason for their existence. You would think they might have learned their lesson from the pandemic that lasted two years and completely destroyed their livelihood. They barely lived a hand-to-mouth existence. They depended on various government or NGO assistance to pull themselves through the hard times. And yet, they don't value the return of tourists to their towns. Their homestays (there are so many new ones being built to cater to the demand!!), their restaurants, their petrol pumps, their tiny shops, their vehicles - everything is for and because of the tourists who spend so much time and money to visit these far away places. The kind of reception we get is startling, to say the least. 

The trip to ML cost us around Rs 25,000 for 3 adults and 1 child for 4 days (taxi for 2 days = Rs 8000, self drive car from Zoomcar = Rs 4000 rent + Rs 4000 petrol, homestay two nights = Rs 2800 + Rs 2200, parking/entry fees = Rs 1000 and food). This excludes the flight charges, of course. This is the amount from Guwahati to Shillong. 

Overall, a great trip and many memories to last a lifetime. The landscape of Meghalaya is so mesmerizing that your heart yearns to go back and stay there for some more days. It was a memorable trip and well worth the money.