A Walk Over The Clouds

The Summer is round the corner…..So some past memories floated by …when I was a kid in school and visited Assam/Meghalaya during summer vacation……..

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We boarded the Guwahati bound IC 224 flight at approximately 1:20pm. It was my first year at college and our summer vacation had just started. Both my sister
and me were very excited as it was our first tour to the north-eastern part of India and we had plans to tour Shillong and Cherrapunji, both in Meghalaya. My father
was posted at Guwahati’s Nunmati Oil refinery during that time and he was supposed to pick us up from the airport. Our flight took about 1 hour 5 minutes and soon
after arrival, we headed towards the main city, where we checked in at Hotel Starline. We halted at Guwahati for one day, during which we visited one of the holy
temples in Assam, Ma Kamakhya Temple, which was positioned at the top of a nearby hill. The temple was very appealing. The serene ambience made the mind calm. From the hill, we had a bird’s eye view of the city. We saw the Brahmaputra river with all it’s grandeur drifting by the city banks. Its origination is said to be from the Mansarovar. The people here were very friendly and simple. Guwahati is the last stop of the
railway network in this region and is known as the gateway to the north-east. The business is mostly carried by people whose ancestors had migrated from other
places. Though the capital is Dispur, Guwahati is still the business hub of the state. Another industrial city is Jorhat which is located in northern Assam.

We started the second leg of our trip in the following evening. This time the destination was Shillong. We had hired a private car, which charged us six hundred rupees. Those, looking for other means of transportation can avail tourist buses whose fare would be something around Rs. 90-100 per head. We journeyed through hilly forests and
sometimes tea gardens. All round we could see only greenery and occasionally small tribal children smiling and waving at us. Meghalaya, standing for Abode Of The
Clouds in the local language, is surrounded by Assam in the north and by the other five sister states in the east and the south. In the west, it borders with Bangladesh.
The weather was getting cooler as we were moving uphill and could feel the pressure getting lower. We had no idea that the climate would be winter-like at Shillong.
So, we decided as soon as we check in at the pre-booked hotel, to buy some warm clothes. At this time of the year people die due to the heat wave in some parts of Bihar,
Orissa and West Bengal and here we were moving towards a teeth-clattering cold experience. As we were nearing Shillong, a big hoarding welcomed us to The
Scotland of the East. The appealing countryside contrivance prompted our mind to have a halt and experience the picturesque valley. It was mesmerizing.
We wondered what would it be like in Shillong, when the surroundings were so bewitching. It took us nearly four hours to cover the distance. Our hotel was very
close to the taxi stand. We moved into our rooms as quickly as possible. It was not exactly a room it was a well-furnished suite. After some refreshments, my father
decided to take a walk with me to get warm while my mother and sister stayed indoors. The city was clean and neat and it appeared as if this city wasn't a part of the quintessential India where we could only get to see dust and pollution. The roads had all one way traffic and the terrain was undulating. It was tiring, as we had to move
uphill to get to the market. There was a big crowd mainly due to the tourists, most of whom were from Gujarat, Bihar, Assam and West Bengal. I was startled when my father informed me that most women of Shillong work in offices and the boys mange indoors. During marriage, a groom moves into the house of the bride and the daughter inherits from her mother. Strange it may seem to be, but it is true, as we had arranged a guide next day who confirmed the fact. Our guide was also the owner of the vehicle that we hired for Rs 800 for twelve hours of sight seeing at Cherrapunji and its surrounding area. Our guide happened to be a Bengali, a little aged though but was agile. He informed us that percentage of native people residing in Shillong was less
than the people coming from other communities. Mostly Assamese and Bengalis dominated the business. However the number of Bengali people had risen due to those who migrated from Bangladesh, and they still flocked in through certain porous border points in Tripura and Meghalaya. There are too many radical groups who demand more autonomy from the government because they feel deprived of their own land as the economy is mainly controlled by outsiders. One of them is the Bodo tribe who have their own outfit engaged in extortion of businessmen and executives, the Nagas also frequently get engaged in fights with the Marwaries and the Bengalis who carry out business in certain hilly areas of Meghalaya. As we were moving towards Cherrapunji, we occasionally found ourselves above the cloud level and all that could be seen was the road in front of us and cloud all over. It was a little scary as on our left side, there was a canyon and a fall from that height meant only death. Sometimes visibility
almost came down to zero but that did not prevent our guide from moving ahead. He was used to it. When we arrived at Cherrapunji, it was cloudy. When asked when
would it rain, he said 'anytime', and there it was! As soon as he spoke we got wet. The first place that we visited was Ramakrishna Mission’s museum. We saw
various kinds of artifacts. Cherrapunji seemed to be a gloomy city, probably due to the cloudy weather and not much was to be seen. There were not many people
staying in this small hilly town. Next we headed towards Mayusmi, a small village fifteen minutes drive from Cherrapunji. Cherrapunji is known to have recorded the
highest rainfall in the world, but most rainfall is recorded all throughout the year at Mayusmi. We all got soaked. As usual, it was raining at Mayusmi. There was
a cave that had inscriptions on its wall dated back as much as 5000 years. The cave was several hundred kilometers in length and we came to know that its other
end was located across the border, in Bangladesh. Until recently, it was used by illegal immigrants coming from Bangladesh. Now the cave has been closed by the Govt.
of India. Tourists can rent torchlight from nearby stalls and go inside the cave, but we were uninterested when we saw that the water level inside the cave was waisthigh.
From there we moved towards two falls nearby which provided us with a spectacle of god’s creativity. It was evening when we finally came back to our hotel
room. We retired early to our beds as another hectic tour lied the next day. our guide picked us up the next morning at 9 a.m and we headed towards the oldest and
the most famous church in Shillong. It was St. Mary's Cathedral, built when this region was being colonized by the British. Our next stop was the city zoo. More than a
zoo it was a green enclosure much better than those we see in the metros. among the rare species, there was one Orang-utan; other animals were Pelicans and a white Siberian Tiger. From the city zoo, we moved to a place, which has appealed to me the most. It took us nearly forty-five minutes to reach there. It was at a much higher level than Shillong. We could see the whole city occasionally being blanketed by clouds. Sometimes we were engulfed by clouds, which looked more like a fog. A breeze chilled our face and hands. Standing above the cloud-level watching them drifting along, I felt like walking straight over them. We spend a considerable amount of time at that point before coming back to Shillong. On our way back, we saw the headquarters of the Eastern Airforce Command. We had to speed away as it was a no-stop zone. On our fourth day, we moved back to Guwahati by a hired car. On our way back, my sister collected some fern leaves, because she only saw them in the textbooks. She collected as many as possible for herself and her friends. We boarded our return flight from Guwahati with an urge in our mind to visit the same places again. We fastened our seat belts before waving a final bye to one of my memorable sights in the state of Meghalaya.