Sunday, December 26, 2010

Summer Vacation in NorthEast India - Part 9 (Megalaya road travel experience)

After hiring a taxi for two days, all of us started our trip to shillong from Guwahati. We estimated to start the trip at 8:00am in the morning but the taxi came only at 9:30am credits go to the bad weather and rain.

Guwahati is a better looking city compare to Kolkata in my views with a single larger high road connecting the whole city and end of the road starts with beautiful scenic mountains.



With in few minutes we are already passed Assam border and touching the most beautiful state of the country called Magalaya (House of Clouds).


I have been heard lots of people saying Magalaya is a beautiful state but the first time experience is something which cannot be described in words. The 90 odd kilometers stretch twisted road trip is awesome and green green more green is what welcomes you every other corner.


When I saw Welcome to Megalaya board was having some civil construction on the National Highway and road was pathetic contributing to huge traffic jam, we had to spend around 30mins but moving inch by inch, but never felt tired as we do in city.


In another incidents trucks parked in opposite direction almost in the middle of road again caused traffic jam, the red lighted cars also added it's part by making the jam more jammed.


Most of the places the climate was so chilled with partially drizzling all over the stretch.



During the road trip, at time we felt we are in Kerala but this place offers much more than what any other place can offer to a tourist, lots of lonely places, beautiful wooden houses which are built on a raised platform from ground level, Paddy fields, Tall trees, British time bridges, Yellow colored Mahindra commanders (taxi) and most importantly Jeeps with trailers attached(the most number of jeeps with trailers are only found in this part of the country I guess).







Our family thoroughly enjoyed the whole trip to Shillong, enroute to Shillong we had cruised along with the Umtru River and the road goes above reservoir built on Umiam Lake (Barapani), I think this lake gets water from Umtru River just before it joins hands with Brahmaputra River. I had initial plans to go to this river but while cruising over the lake we really didn’t feel like stopping over and hence passed the sight, but it was a huge lake.

The total travel took around 2 and half hours and when we entered the Shillong city we started spotting cook automobiles that are Maruti 800s serving as taxis, Tata trucks converted into buses with nose, Yellow Commander taxis and numerous SWB Jeeps.




The Shillong city is also on the hills but not like the Darjeeling where I couldn’t find a single flat surface. If only I can award a state for cleanliness I will surely present the award to Megalaya, what a clean city and state it was.


Looks like more than civilian’s settlement the Shillong hosts more Air-force and Army people, you can see lots of Cantonment around the city.

Our cab directly reached Elephant Falls before proceeding further to accommodation; the first thing to surprise me is what was seen on the ticket booth’s wall that was saying “All the armed forces are requested to obey the rules and regulations of the management”, I guess there are stories behind these sentences and indeed I believed the armed forces are more disciplined than the normal public and the board was only mentioned about Armed forces.

Lots more to be followed, stay tuned.

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