The Meghalaya Roadtrip

October 20, 2021

The Meghalaya Roadtrip

COVID FOMOs

Hey there! It's been long right? so it called for a long ride. So how often has it happened to you that your nearby resort day trip turns into a 3-day unplanned mountain visit?. Strange and surprising right. I know and they say unplanned trips are the best ones (not sure who said that but it's true)

So I was fresh out of covid and definitely felt sick by staying inside the room for 20 days straight hence we decided to go on a day trip.

We started the journey around 9 am-ist with no planned destination from Nagaon (my home town) and reached jorabhat (weekend getaway location) around 11:30. Peer pressure led to us deciding that let's go to the Meghalaya border and figure out what the restrictions are for covid to enter the state. It turned out that if you are vaccinated you are allowed to enter the state. There we go, my friends were leaving for Bengaluru in the next 2 days and what better coincidence for this. So our Meghalaya journey started.

My last visit to the state was 4 years back, still in college and travelling on a really low budget. This time we had the luxury of having a road trip without having to worry about the driver's feedback on which place is not good enough to have a quick stopover.

It's 1 pm and we were really confident about returning back the same day after visiting the orchid park resort but here's the 1st twist. I tell you the mountain air has something as soon as we left our cars to check out the umium lake it was mesmerizingly beautiful, adding to that the lovely gloomy weather that day. Oh my god, there was no way I could convince myself to go back the same day.

There was at least a 10-degree difference in temperature compared to my hometown so a series of events followed after that. We quickly reserved a hotel to stay in that night (mandatory to enter Shillong due to covid restrictions), gathered the required documents to create a visitors pass and we were set for the day. We stayed in umium lake for a couple of hours and then headed towards Shillong.

It was adventurous as Bonny (our driver and friend?) was driving the car in the mountains for the very first time and let me tell you driving a car in the mountains is not a walk in the park, but still, we trusted his good luck more than his driving skills to get us through.

At 4 pm, we reached the famous police bazaar in Shillong. After settling down for a bit in our hotel room, oh the hotel room, it looked like directly being copied from a 70s Bollywood suhagaat bedroom, everything felt 'touched' (If you know what I mean). We went out in search of cheap 1st copies of Nike, Adidas clothes (you cannot tell it's duplicate unless you are an enthusiast). We ended up buying a lot of unnecessary stuff which felt necessary at that very moment. We found a small Tibetian food place which at least looked awesome and my friends also said it tasted awesome too. I forgot to mention I had lost my sense of smell/taste due to covid back then and trust me it's not a good feeling. Yeah, that was basically our adventurous first day.

The next day, We again planned to return back to our hometown after having a 'short' visit to sohra (cherapunji) but no suspense we didn't. It was similar to watching a great movie without knowing the ending if we hadn't stayed that night. After finishing all the touristy stuff, we found a lovely homestay for the night.

basically, we had the entire campus to us as there were no other guests that night. We enjoyed a quiet evening, a bit of a walk to get some local dinner and had a wonderful outdoor dinner (it was freezing by then).

Finally, the 3rd day the mountains allowed us to return back to our homes. We visited the Laitlum Grand Canyons on our way back. Mesmerising again. Never felt like leaving from there. That's the thing about mountains it's so huge but at the same time still so calming (Humans should learn from nature). Every time I visit the mountains there is always that lesson to be more calm and humble at the same time work towards being magnanimous.

Did I tell you who our driver was for our returning journey? it was Biki, unlike his brother Bonny who didn't have the experience of driving in the mountains, Biki didn't have the experience of driving itself. You might be wondering why we allowed him to drive then? If someone argues by saying that I am 26 years old, elder son and this is my mother's car, you don't have a point just being the passenger right so I had to agree. Luckily we survived.