Trip to Meghalaya: Part 1: Mawlyngbna: Guest Post by Nidhi Rana

So, my cousin had gone on this trip a while back and I had been asking her to pen this down for a while and finally perseverance paid off.

Handing over to her:

Trip to Meghalaya (The Abode of Clouds)

I was at a friend’s place when I saw an article in Lonely Planet on the living root bridges of Meghalaya. That’s when I decided that I have to visit and with that in mind I went to Meghalaya last year.

Following are the places I visited:

Guwahati

Shillong

Campfire Trails – Mawlyngbna (only place that we pre-booked)

Mawsynram (Wettest place on earth)

Mawlynnong (Cleanest village in Asia)

Riwai (Oldest living root bridge)

Rewai (Hardest trek)

Cherrapunji

Nongriat (Double Decker Living Root Bridge)

Day 1: Mumbai - Guwahati - Shillong 

We took an evening flight from Mumbai to Guwahati. We planned to stay the night in Guwahati and take a taxi early morning to Shillong since we thought we won’t get a taxi to Shillong late at night. To our surprise, when we got out of Guwahati airport, we heard all the taxi drivers shouting, "Shillong Shillong".

Me & my friend, could hardly control our excitement. We took a shared taxi to Shillong (Rs 1300 for 2 people) and reached Shillong at around 11 PM. We then started searching for a budget friendly place to stay overnight, since we had to catch an early morning taxi to Mawlyngbna. Most of the hotels were shut, but our driver helped us find a suitable place. We found a guest house (in our budget) near police bazaar & called it a night.

Day 2:

We had pre booked ourselves into Campfire Trails and coordinated with Ani from there, who asked us to go to the bus-stand & take Rynku’s taxi to reach Mawlyngbna. 

We got to the bus-stand at 6 PM, thinking Rynku is a person. But only after reaching there, did we realize that Rynku is the last village on the Meghalaya-Bangladesh border. We did not find any taxi, and so took a local bus.

We reached Mawlyngbna at around 10 AM. Our guide Chalzing came to pick us up from the bus-stand. We finally reached campfire trails, which has beautiful cottages with awesome views.

Mawlyngbna, is located on a hilltop and from the hill, one can truly experience the sight of Khasi hills seamlessly merging into the Bangladeshi plains. So much for borders.







Chalzing did not waste any time & took us for a trek.

Drinking water from some local plant.

So, this was a  2.5 km long "water-trek" to Umiam Lake, popularly known as the badapani (big water), which was an experience beyond compare. 

Well, a water trek means you literally trek in the water. This seemed like something that Indiana Jones was more likely to do.

Not only did this involve a long water trek, but also waterfall rappelling without harness & any equipment - way too adventurous! 

To soothe ourselves down, in the end, we kayaked for almost an hour in the quiet Umiam Lake.

After this, we went back to our cottage, freshened up and got ready for the night trek in the village.

It was very serene. We visited these small local food-joints & tried some local food.

Nomnom

Jadoh with Black Tea

Local Sweets

Since nothing could have topped this day, we ended it on a high note and called it a night.

Day 3: Fossils

Next day we went on another trek to see animal footprints & star fish fossils.

These fossils have put Mawlyngbna on the geological map and with good reason. It truly is something to see a time-stamped stone.  The fossils are dated to the late Cambrian period, around 450 million years ago. Who knows what the Cambrian period is, but 450 MILLION years is hard to comprehend in human terms. 

The animal footprints are actually from a folklore. The story goes that this place was a animal market called, Ka iew Luri Lura.

As per the folklore, these impressions in the rocks that look like animal footprints are from the good times when animals could still talk and they came to this place to trade with each other. "Well, hello Mr Hare, how much is your coat for?"

Near here are also 2 waterfalls, that are most notable amongst many, Um Diengkain & Ar Phalat, which have some great fishes.

So, this was the end to the first part of our journey. In the evening we took a taxi from Mawlyngbna to Mawlynnong, which is the cleanest village of Asia.

The route was like a dream.