This is based on my trip in October 2024. See also my Shillong post and my book and music recommendations for Meghalaya.
For many more photos, you can see my wife's Instagram highlights on Meghalaya. The first half is mostly from Shillong, while the second half cover's this portion of the trip.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Bus tour to Dawki, “Asia’s Cleanest Village” & a root bridge
Mawphlang Sacred Forest & David Scott Trail
Cherrapunji (Nongriat + caves & waterfalls)
My thoughts on hiking
Introduction
After a month-long stay in Shillong, we spent a week exploring a bit of rural Meghalaya, though we didn’t get very far off the beaten path. We went to Mawphlang sacred forest, did the David Scott trail, and then spent the rest of the time in Cherrapunji, doing a day of caves and waterfalls and going to Nongriat another day. We had planned to do some day and weekend trips from Shillong but mostly never got around to it as transportation was such a pain and Sundays were mostly off limits (being church day), and one day we had to cancel our plans because of very intense rain (not unusual when traveling in Meghalaya, something you just have to accept!) (also, don’t be disappointed if the beautiful viewpoint you planned for is ruined because of fog, you just have to go with the flow here!). We did get out once, though, doing a government run bus tour from Shillong that took us to Dawki and a root bridge and waterfall on the way, plus that Mawlynnong village which is advertised as the cleanest in Asia, as if that could possibly be determined.
Everything around Cherrapunji (including Nongriat and the David Scott trail) was pretty amazing and I highly recommend it. Dawki was great too, though I’m not sure it’s worth driving that far unless you have somewhere to stay down there.
I’ll give a quick introduction with general thoughts on the region and then will write in order about the trips to Dawki, Mawphlang, the David Scott trail, and the stuff around Cherrapunji. I also wrote a rant about hiking which I originally had in my introduction but decided to put all the way at the bottom to make the rest of this more readable.
For some context, I’m usually the kind of person who prefers cities to countrysides, and though I love being in nature, just being in beautiful places isn’t enough for me and I need more. I want my nature combined with great cultural experiences and local food and interesting historical sites, otherwise I don’t really feel it’s worth my time and money. For the most part, tourism in Meghalaya (and Northeast India in general) is geared around “just being in beautiful places,” and I wasn’t that excited. (Which isn’t to say that there aren’t great cultural experiences to be had, but they generally seemed hard to find and get to, and the limited amount of historical sites are very low key and seem to need a lot of context to appreciate, in my opinion). I’m totally the kind of person who would be like “Yeah rural Meghalaya is cool but Shillong is where it’s at!” and I was expecting to feel that way.
But actually it’s Shillong that’s kinda cool and rural Meghalaya that is great (as probably everybody except for me expected, though I really liked Shillong too). I’d rank the region among the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and it’s exceptionally varied. I think it's also easier to get to than most very beautiful places in India, in terms of both distance and comfort. The roads were generally decent and I never wanted to vomit. And though I do find it unfortunate that it’s all middlingly touristy and there’s basically no interesting cultural experiences to be had without a long, uncomfortable, overpriced car ride followed by an hour-long trek and a pre-booked meal and meeting with the village guide, I still loved it. While out in beautiful places I would make up stories and envision movies set in these places, inspired by local folklore, set to Khasi folk music. This was great. I got my culture fix in my own head. (Does anybody else travel like this?)
(I have a theory that people travel to feel like they’re in a movie, most often a movie about traveling. I used to think I’m different from those people but I realized that I also seek the feeling of being in a movie, I just want to be in different movies than other travelers?)
I’ll tell you about the places I went, but my hunch is that there are so many great places to visit that any single itinerary of amazing must-see places can be totally ignored. So read on for thoughts on individual popular places, nearly all highly recommended, but don’t think these are THE places you have to visit in Meghalaya. You should definitely go to a root bridge, a waterfall, a cave, a river, a walking trail, and a village, but it doesn’t have to be the same root bridge, waterfall, cave, river, walking trail or village someone else told you about.
I find places like Meghalaya confusing to travel in because I don’t know how to decide where to go, not to mention how to go and when to go. I have some mental algorithm that helps me decide which tombs and temples and old cinemas and restaurants to visit but I don’t know how to decide which waterfall or cave to go to. I find such decisions very stressful. The best solution is probably to ask people, but that hardly helped because everybody would just list off places that we’ve never heard of and they all sounded the same. “You should go to Mawmroh. Most people go to Mawmrah but it’s too touristy. Mawmsah is good too but only early in the morning. If you can make it by sunset try Nongsah. Don’t miss Nohsngithiang, it’s way better than Nohsnigitang” and I’d lose my mind.
Also, I’m really bad at traveling in places where everything is far away and there is neither Uber nor a robust public transport system.
The Meghalaya tourism website has a lot of cool experiences listed, and if you click on the page and then click on “host” it will give you the contact information. I recommend browsing, but there’s no map of where the experiences are to help you cluster them, and we ended up not doing any (the planned pottery experience had to be canceled due to rain).
We always plan and arrange everything ourselves, mainly for financial reasons but also because I like researching and doing everything myself. But honestly, my top recommendation in Meghalaya would be to just reach out to a good boutique travel agency and say “Hey, I want to go to some amazing, beautiful places and have the best local food and cool cultural experiences that aren’t touristy, please figure it all out and arrange my stays and transportation and make sure I don’t spend more than three hours in the car in a single day and I’ll pay you a million rupees.”
While researching Meghalaya I kept coming across a travel agency called Chalo Hoppo that I thought looked great. We reached out to them about doing some day trips, but it was too expensive (at least with transportation as we didn’t have our own car) and required too much traveling in one day. But their itineraries for their group tours (more reasonably priced) looked great and not like things I’d ever put together on my own. I rarely ever want to join group tours unless they’re centered around durian and we never take off work so they aren’t really feasible, but I thought that if I wanted to explore more in the northeast in the future these would actually be a good idea. I’ve bookmarked them for the future, and I’m sure there are other good ones.
But anyway, we did very well on our own, mostly through random and desperate last minute decision making and also paying a driver for a day and saying “just take us to some cool places that hopefully aren’t packed with tourists.” Though I wouldn’t say you have to follow my recommendations, if you’re lazy you can.
Dawki & Mawlynnong (“Asia’s Cleanest Village”)
I’ll now get into my recommendations, starting with the government run bus tour from Shillong, which I don’t recommend, though it did take us to Dawki, which I do recommend, though I’m not totally sure it’s worth the travel time as a day trip.
I knew I wouldn’t like the bus tour, but I also had been in Shillong a few weeks and felt we needed to get out of the city, and every taxi driver we spoke with was very expensive. We saw these government run tours which are very reasonably priced and we thought we should just do it and complain about it afterwards.
Despite a nice website, the government bus tour system is confusing. We called them and could hardly communicate with them. We went into their office and they seemed half asleep and disinterested in talking to us. We went I think on a Wednesday and asked about the tour on Saturday. They said they weren’t sure if it would happen because it doesn't happen everyday. We asked when they would know if it’s happening and they said usually the day before, it depends how many people book. We said it should probably happen Saturday because that’s when people like to do travel things, and they said “yeah probably” but couldn’t be bothered to discuss probabilities based on the prior scheduling of the bus tours. By the way, there are three bus tours, one to Dawki, one to Cherrapunji, and one around Shillong, they only run one a day and I’m not sure there’s any way to know in advance which is happening.
I won’t tell you more about the tour system because you should avoid doing it, unless you really don’t have the money to travel any other way. I don’t get how people enjoy traveling like this, going rapidly from pretty place to pretty place, hardly having enough time to really take places in and get to know them, just stopping long enough to take some nice photos and then moving on, having zero engagement with the local culture, and spending half the day in the bus (whose driver loved to honk and blow my eardrums out whenever I’d stand outside when waiting for other people to board because I wanted to stretch my legs a little longer before sitting back down). I found it kind of sad and disturbing that such a thing exists.
Anyway, the itinerary we did, which included a root bridge, Mawlynnong (Asia’s cleanest village, supposedly), and Dawki is very popular, so I’ll write quickly about it. Overall I thought the places we went were maybe worth visiting and I’m glad we went, but it’d be better if you were staying nearby. As a day trip from Shillong I found it to be way too much time in the car in a single day. We had met people who did the same itinerary starting in Cherrapunji and that’s hardly any closer. I don’t know, maybe people like long car rides much more than me. I have a low tolerance for these things and it really seems unnecessary given how many great things there are to see near Cherrapunji, and if I am traveling so far and at a high cost I’d prefer some offbeat, less touristy places.
First we went to a root bridge not far from Mawlynnong. Based on google maps, I’m guessing it was Riwai. It’s really amazing! The only root bridges I saw were this one and the ones at Nongriat, and I’m not sure it matters much which root bridge you see, it’s more about going to whichever works with your itinerary, but make sure you go to one of them.
This one is convenient especially for the less physically active as you only have to walk down an easy path for 5-10 minutes to get there, while many of the root bridges are less accessible. That also makes it more touristy, but it was no more crowded than the much less accessible double decker bridge at Nongriat, and everybody clustered around the bridge. Walk a few minutes down the river and locals are fishing and washing clothes. Up the steps in the direction away from the car park I think is a village. I gladly would have spent an hour here just hanging out and exploring. Unfortunately our bus tour allotted us like 15 minutes. Oh well. I still really enjoyed it. Highly recommended, if you’re nearby.
Then we went to Mawlynnong, famous for being named Asia’s cleanest village. I don’t know if I recommend this. Not a slight against the village, I just really have no idea because it was pouring rain when we were there. I walked around the village but I could hardly see ten feet ahead of me. It wasn’t a romantic rain walk, it was a “what the hell am I doing, this is stupid” rain walk. Not the village’s fault, it was just bad timing.
I’ll be honest, I suspect pretty strongly that the village is overrated. Maybe I’m biased because I had this feeling going into it, but nothing I saw there changed my mind, not that the village got a really fair shot from me though. I got the impression that it’s clean but also too touristy and there’s nothing to see or do, and people just come to say that they went to the cleanest village but you’re better off going to a more off the beaten path village that is just as clean but also has more character? Go if you’re nearby, I guess. It did seem kinda nice. There was a nice old church. There were treehouses you can climb up and get great views that stretch out to Bangladesh, apparently, if the weather is right. Maybe if it’s not raining people are out and about and you can chat with friendly village people and observe village life. I’m of the opinion that the point of going to villages is to eat unique village food but the restaurants just seemed to serve north Indian thalis and Chinese food, but maybe there’s some way to pre-book a nice meal at someone’s house.
Next we went to Dawki, stopping at a nice roadside waterfall on the way. Dawki was awesome. It’s just a river. You take a short boat ride. Not that exciting (unless you’re really excited about the idea of going to the Bangladesh border, but I find this less exciting than most people, I’ve traveled too much and am too jaded to care about the geographical boundaries of modern nation states, though I did have the semi interesting observation while driving that the India side of the border was much greener than the other side).
I loved it though. I like boat rides for some reason. Though the market area where tourists go is very busy, the boat ride was very quiet and peaceful (maybe the rains helped in this regard as fewer people took boat rides?). We saw locals fishing. Our boatman appeared Bangladeshi and I was reminded of A River Called Titas. My wife was bummed that the water was muddy because of the rains, while she had seen pictures of crystal clear water. I didn’t care.
So, highly recommended, if you’re kind of sort of nearby. Probably not recommended to drive three hours one way for, though. You gotta decide for yourself if that’s worth it. A lot of people say it is. I say it’s just a lovely boat ride on a beautiful river at a manmade border that people overrate the significance of.
Mawphlang Sacred Forest & David Scott Trail
Now onto Mawphlang where we went to the Sacred Forest and did the David Scott Trail.
We stayed for two nights at Balari Homestay in Mawphlang (working one of the days, not the best setup for that but we got okay internet on our phones). I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly charming village and unless you’re planning to do the David Scott trail I’m not sure there’s a good reason to stay here, but I’d definitely recommend Balari if you’re planning to do the trail. It’s a basic accommodation but it’s clean and comfortable, they serve decent food, and the people who run it are very nice and helpful. The owner was concerned we didn’t have anything to do around there on our workday so he called his friend who took us on a really beautiful hike at a reasonable cost (I think 500). There’s also a great viewpoint we did a short hike to on our own. I don’t remember what we paid for the room or food but I recall thinking it was decently priced, neither very cheap nor very expensive, good for Meghalaya. We had planned to stay at a place a short drive away called Maple Pine, but the dates didn’t work out. In any case, I’m glad we stayed in the village, walking distance from the trail start and the Sacred Forest.
Khasi tribes all have sacred forests on protected land where rituals are performed and it’s forbidden to take anything from them outside of the forest. Mawphlang is apparently the only one open to the public, and you have to go in with a guide (they cost a few hundred rupees and hang around at the entrance where you buy your ticket, you don’t need to book in advance). The guides tell you a bit about the significance of the forest, the rituals performed, and the plants and their healing properties, and the tour takes about an hour. It was empty in the morning when we went right when it opened (the benefit of staying nearby!) but there were people who came in shortly after us. We had planned to go in the late afternoon the day before when we arrived in Mawphlang, but our homestay host was at the forest and told my wife on the phone that we wouldn’t enjoy it as it was packed with people.
I really enjoyed our walk and I liked getting to understand and experience a bit more of Khasi culture. Also, there are some cool monoliths nearby, and some traditional houses to check out across the road (not worth going inside the complex to see them up close, just see them from the outside). I definitely recommend this if you’re coming for the David Scott trail (start early so you can do both!) or passing by en route to somewhere else.
However, I don’t think it’s so great that it’s worth going out of the way for. It gets a lot of tourists and I’m not totally sure where they go before and after because I know they aren’t doing the trail. The road from Shillong diverges between here and Cherrapunji and it’s a pretty big detour for anyone going to Cherrapunji. There’s a lot of other less touristy stuff in this direction, though. I looked into doing some of it (caves, waterfalls, hot spring, rice cake making, some other stuff) but it was all too far.
As for the David Scott Trail, I really loved it! It’s a 16km hike, mostly pretty easy, very beautiful throughout, and consistently interesting as the landscape kept changing. And it was empty! We didn’t see any other people doing it, which I found pretty surprising. We did get to see glimpses of village life along the way.
We did it in around five or six hours, which is standard. I’m not that big into hiking (see below) but it was so beautiful, and since it wasn’t especially challenging I could appreciate the scenery. Also, you start at one side and end at another side (we booked a taxi to pick up our bags at the homestay and then pick us up at the other side to take us to our next homestay in Cherrapunji). One thing I hate about hiking is that I spend all this time going up and then have to go down the same way. I hate repetition! I need novelty! So this was a wonderful innovation.
I should note that I got a good weather day. Fairly cloudy most of the day, but not gloomy. I used to hike in Arizona and thought it was really stupid and unpleasant to be out and about with the sun beating down on you the whole time. The chances of that happening are pretty low here. On the other hand, the chances of intense rain are probably fairly high here. If that happens it’s probably best (for most people, at least) to cancel the plan and do something else, I guess? The very intense rain never seemed to last all that long, though, so you could just wait it out.
This might be my favorite hike I’ve ever done, but since I don’t like hiking and only do it a few times a year, am I a good judge of hiking trails? That’s an interesting question. I wouldn’t take movie recommendations from people who have no interest in movies. I actually met a hiking enthusiast in Nagaland who kind of scoffed at our rave review of the David Scott trail. “See, Meghalaya’s hikes… aren’t really hikes. They’re more like lengthy walks through nature.” Well, that’s a good way of putting it! And though I don’t really like hiking, I love walks through nature! So maybe if you want something very vigorous this isn’t the best trail for you, but if you want a beautiful 5+ hour walk that spans rivers and valleys and villages and is full of beautiful plants and berries you can pick and is very peaceful, then I highly recommend it. I’d rank it among our Meghalaya highlights.
Also, at the end of the trail is a great restaurant! I highly recommend Indigenous Cafe (not on google maps, or it is but the location is wrong, but just walk north on the road for around five minutes after the exit of the trail, or drive like a minute). A small little bamboo shack that serves some of the best food you’ll get in Meghalaya. It was set up with the help of Nefsas, which is a slow food organization that has put on some farmer’s markets and helped with restaurants like this which serve very traditional food with local organic ingredients. We just asked them for a vegetarian platter and got a wide range of beautiful, fresh vegetable dishes served on a banana leaf. We also got some lightly sweetened millet porridgey tea that I liked.
Indigenous Cafe is on the road between Shillong and Cherrapunji, so it’s highly recommended to anyone who comes to Cherrapunji. The landmark is the David Scott trail end point. I think. You just have to get lucky and find it. It’s worth it.
Cherrapunji
Okay, that brings us to Cherrapunji, which was amazing!
(In addition to the aforementioned amazing Indigenous Cafe on the way to Cherrapunji, I also enjoyed stopping at Cafe Cherrapunjee, also on the road between Shillong and Cherrapunji, though the food is more generic, I think just desi-Chinese, but it’s a cute place in an old house. I've heard there's also excellent food to be had in some small towns along the highway, such as Mylliem, but as we didn't have our own car and were in shared taxis we were unable to stop.)
We spent I think five nights in Cherrapunji (aka Sohra), exploring for only two days and working the rest of the time. We stayed at Aïom Sohra, which was a great homestay and definitely recommended. We got the smaller room which was 2800 inr, not cheap but for a nice place in Cherrapunji it’s quite a reasonable value (in general we found Meghalaya to be pretty expensive for stays). Very clean, nicely decorated, and it was a comfortable place to work (we hardly got mobile network but the wifi was very good, though I should note that in the event of an outage, which impacts the whole area and happened once for a few hours when we were there, you’d be kinda screwed). It was also in a nice quiet neighborhood with old houses, very old world Sohra, nothing like the area we drove through with tons of construction. My only complaint is that the walls don’t insulate sound very well so we could hear the people in the next room, which was the family room and one night had a crying baby. But it mostly didn’t bother us.
The owner Tei is also a great host who we really enjoyed talking to. She gave great tips and hooked us up with a good, reasonably priced driver. I mentioned earlier that I found it confusing how to decide what to do in Meghalaya, but she took the pressure off and even shared with us a secret natural infinity pool spot to have a picnic, at the edge of a cliff with views that stretch out to Bangladesh on a clear day. (I can’t tell you where, it’s a secret!) She’s an excellent cook too (and she makes kombucha!). The food at the homestay comes from the cook at the neighboring homestay, and it’s good, simple, inexpensive north Indian food, but if you request in advance and Tei has the time she’ll cook for you. She made us an outstanding meal, one of the best on our trip, of hard to find Khasi dishes in addition to a Mizo dish and the most delicious veggies in a homemade vegan cheese sauce. I don’t want to hype the meal up too much because she might be too busy to cook for you, but I do highly recommend it if you can arrange it! (It probably helps to stay for five nights.)
She also found out for me when the big weekly Cherrapunji market was. I was really excited about that. The market happens every eight days, I believe, so it falls on a different day each week and this information is not publicized anywhere for some reason. I’m really happy I got to go, it’s an amazing market with all sorts of unusual produce. Highly recommended if you love markets (though I wouldn’t say it’s soooo much better than Shillong’s Iewduh, so don’t feel too bad if you miss it.) We bought a lot of good fruits, some rice and millet cakes, and also ate at one of the ja and sha restaurants upstairs (I don’t know the name nor do I know if it had a name) and it was probably my favorite that we ate at, and it was the only local restaurant we went to in Meghalaya that served mushrooms. The market (on gmaps as Ïewbah Sohra) is open every day on a much smaller scale, though I’m not sure if the restaurants upstairs are.
But I know you people didn’t come to Cherrapunji for the market. You came for its great history. Sohra was, of course, the regional capital for the British before they moved to Shillong because it rained too much (Cherrapunji is said to be the rainiest place in the world, though apparently that distinction has moved to some place a few dozen miles away). The still standing and very cute Nongsawlia Presbyterian Church was the state’s first, and – okay fine, I know you’re just here for the waterfalls.
(I had planned to type out a rather funny story about Cherrapunji’s history, but honestly I felt so disconnected from the history here that it hardly even feels relevant. There’s some cool Khasi historical monuments you’ll see on the road as well, but I found no information about them online and didn’t feel compelled to stop in and visit them. There are nice old houses. Old churches. Old monoliths and other stones. And even a kind of amazing old abandoned cement factory. But it’s okay, just go for caves and waterfalls. It’d be cool if they promoted the historical stuff a bit more, though.)
I came to Cherrapunji without much of a plan for what to do, my wife just wanted to go to waterfalls, and I thought it’d be cool to see some caves as well, but really was semi-indifferent to both even though I was sure I’d enjoy them. I guess this doesn’t mean much because I hardly had expectations, but Cherrapunji exceeded my expectations, and I was actually sad to leave.
What I loved about Cherrapunji is that there are a ton of amazing things to see that are a short drive from one another. I almost always get annoyed with naturey tourist recommendations because they are often like “drive an hour and 45 minutes one-way to go to this amazing waterfall,” and I don’t want to do that. But Cherrapunji is one wonder after another without spending much time in the car.
The landscape around Cherrapunji is unsurprisingly really beautiful, but what was most interesting and fun to me was how diverse it was within a short distance. Our pictures from a single full day tour look like they are from a full week’s vacation that spanned several regions. I suck at geography and describing what plants look like, but much of it is these vast hilly fields that in the afternoon consistently get covered in an eerie fog that people like to compare to Scotland I guess. But then the fields give way to steep cliffs, and a ten minute drive can take you to a lush forest with elaborate cave systems, or a five minute hike takes you from a seemingly endless field to a pirate’s cove with a massive waterfall, and there are many such places to visit within a fairly small radius. Two people can have entirely different itineraries and still see a range of extravagant sights.
To be honest, all of the places we went were great, but the quality of the experience really just depended on whether or not they were crowded. That kind of makes my recommendations pointless, I think, because my experiences are not necessarily replicable. There were some places where my wife and I were the only ones. There were some that had a few dozen people there. There were some with a modest crowd that I didn’t mind. There were some where the people annoyed me. I’m not sure you’ll have the same experiences I had wherever you go, and it just depends on the time of day, season, and luck. Wherever you go first thing in the morning should be pretty quiet, so wake up early. Also, we were told that (unsurprisingly) weekends are more crowded than weekdays, so that’s something to keep in mind when trip planning.
My single favorite thing we did was hike down to the double decker root bridge in Nongriat, which takes around 90 minutes each way (for us, at least, but everyone around us was much slower, I think India is the only country where I’m in far better shape than the median person hiking). Disappointingly it was pretty crowded at the bridge, which surprised me considering it’s not an easy hike to do for most people. However, we were largely alone for most of the beautiful hike, and though the double decker bridge is the main event for most people, the single root bridge (which the sign said is the longest root bridge) that comes halfway down, with a slight detour, was just as great, with an incredible setting along a rocky stream. For some reason hardly anyone was there. When we arrived there was no one. We sat for half an hour and read a folk story. At one point a group came for a few minutes and left and we were alone again.
After the double decker bridge you can hike about half an hour further to a natural pool to swim and then an additional half hour to go to a waterfall. We planned to go to the pool but about halfway there some people told us that it was closed. When we walked back to the bridges they were thankfully less crowded than when we first arrived and we enjoyed it more.
Everyone said the hike was very difficult and it made us kind of concerned, but it was easier than I expected. I was intensely sweating on the way back up and it was tiring, but after resting for five minutes I felt totally fine. I didn’t get sore. If you do the full hike, though, it’s a full day thing. We arrived around 9am and left around 3pm. Though I’m glad we did the whole thing, if you don’t think you have the time or stamina to go all the way down I’d still recommend going to the first bridge, which would still give you time/energy to do some other things for the rest of the day.
By the way, we spotted some coffee plants on the hike, and then later went to the nearby Smoky Falls resort, the sister company of the coffee roaster in Shillong with the same name. They collect coffee, some of it wild, from here as well as some other villages in Meghalaya. The cafe at the resort didn’t know how to properly make an iced latte, the only coffee I like, so I can’t really judge, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, it’s a great setting, and you might have better luck ordering something hot. You can buy the beans here and at some other souvenir shops, or in Shillong where they have a cafe that’s not as nice but has a much better barista.
The root bridge hike was one of our days in Cherrapunji. Another day we hired a car to take us to a handful of places, largely caves and waterfalls. You have the choice to go to ones that are pretty easy to get to and are on regular itineraries, or ones that are harder to get to (in terms of both driving and hiking) and are less likely to have people. The latter is probably preferable, but since we wanted to do a handful of things in one day we opted for the former, which I was very happy with.
I’ll start with caves, as we only went to two. First thing in the morning we went to Mawsmai cave, which is a narrow cave which you walk through for around 15 minutes and exit on the other side. I was told it gets very crowded, but it was very quiet when we went. I really loved it. It’s full of bizarre rock formations that reminded me of H.R. Giger designs. The walk isn’t hard, but there are a few moments that required you to do some minor crawling and climbing, which made it feel adventurous, and it was a pretty creepy and atmospheric walk. That said, if it were crowded it would not have been nearly as much fun. If I recall correctly we went around 8am. This is highly recommended, but if you were to get there later I’d say skip it. Maybe. You might like crowds more than I do. (I guess most people do?) In addition to the cave there was a lovely short forest trail where, again, we were the only ones, and there was a deeper cave that you aren’t supposed to go into without gear.
We also went to Arwah cave at around 4pm. I enjoyed it. It’s spacious and well lit and not as evocative as Mawsmai, but there’s a stream running through parts of it and there are some cool fossils to see. There were a lot of people when we went, though since it is much wider than Mawsmai a crowd here isn’t as much of a dealbreaker. Some kids asked us where the fossils were and we showed them and they were very excited. I like helping people. We chose the “rugged” trail to the cave rather than the “peaceful” one and that was empty, and also surprisingly difficult because the pathway was broken. I don’t recommend it unless you’re pretty adventurous (or they might fix the pathway and then I’ll look like a wimp).
Those are the two caves that are on typical tourist itineraries. Both are short and pretty easy. If you want a more intensive cave experience, Mawmluh is the one to do in the area. It requires a guide and equipment. It looks pretty amazing and I would have loved to go, but it would have taken several hours and I didn’t want to devote a good chunk of my day to it.
We also did a few waterfalls and other water activities. It was a great time. Stunning locations. The ones we went to were all in a line in a village. The driver picked five to take us to, and we cut one out, and even going to four was overkill, which shouldn’t have been surprising. Was this itinerary a good idea? Wouldn’t it have been better to go to one waterfall that is further away that you have to hike to and has fewer people? I don’t know. Maybe. But we had a great day, I have no regrets.
We started at Lyngksiar falls, getting there at 9:30am right when they opened. There were a few other people waiting for them to open the gate, but it was quiet and peaceful at the waterfall, which was lovely. As much as the waterfall, I liked the small cave, and the path to the trail leading down is really lovely. This is all highly recommended, but maybe less so later in the day if it’s busier.
After that we went to Janailar, which has a waterfall, which I honestly can’t recall, and a natural swimming pool which was really beautiful. We were the only ones there, other than some locals fishing with some stick thing. That was probably the day’s highlight and we spent almost an hour there.
After that, we went to another beautiful waterfall, I forget the name, but it was fairly crowded and we couldn’t find a good seat, and I felt it was unnecessary to see it after our previous waterfalls, even if it was just as good.
After that we went to Wei Sawdung waterfall, which was undoubtedly the grandest and most beautiful of them. This was probably around 1pm and it was very crowded, but it was big enough that it didn’t bother me too much. Still, this may have been better to do earlier in the morning. It’s a bit of a hike down, not bad except the path clearly isn’t meant for a lot of people. When we asked a woman climbing up how long the hike is she said, very out of breath, “Too much long… too much long… but also… too much beautiful.”
I got to see Dainthlen Falls from a distance in the car which was cool because I love the story of the Thlen.
(We planned to eat lunch at the nearby Saimika resort which looked nice and had Khasi food and was recommended by a number of people to stay at, but our driver told us it was too far and took us to very popular but much further Orange Roots restaurant. We didn't really care but we were confused because Saimika appeared to be much closer, so maybe a road was closed. We later found out drivers eat free at Orange Roots, so he probably just lied to us. Anyway Orange Roots was fun. A generic Indian thali, but quite good. I like places like this where you buy a coupon at a counter and then give it to the server, for some reason I find that exciting.)
I don’t know why I wrote all of that. As I stated earlier you should just book some tour promising an offbeat waterfall experience that takes you to more remote places and offers a money back guarantee if they are crowded. I’m not really joking. Everywhere I went was great but don’t worry about going to those particular places and don’t think because someone is telling you some place is a must see that it’s really a must see. I think there are so many places around Meghalaya that are of roughly equivalent beauty. I contemplated not even writing where I went but so many people asked my wife for an itinerary that I thought I should provide one. But whatever.
My Thoughts on Hiking
I originally had this in my intro but moved it to the end to make the rest of this more legible. There are no recommendations beyond this point, I am just ranting. I wrote this because I am genuinely confused by the phenomenon of hiking, which admittedly is one of the best things to do in Meghalaya (or trekking, as they most frequently call it in India, I say they're the same but some people claim them to have different meanings).
I’m not big into hiking. I do it a few times a year and occasionally really enjoy it but largely don’t see the appeal. To be honest, I think hiking is kind of psychotic behavior, and it’s odd to me how normal and even attractive it is considered to be. I have totally 200% normal human hobbies such as watching movies, reading books, listening to music, traveling, and spending hours at supermarkets reading labels of everything regardless of any intent to buy, and I spend my free time writing about these things, and once every four months or so I meet up with friends, and yet I’m the one that people call weird. Meanwhile lots of people go out of their way to climb up mountains for no apparent reason and nobody questions that.
I can imagine mothers of teenage boys talking about their children. One frets about their son who stares at screens all day and is addicted to pornography, while the other brags about their son whose idea of a good time is climbing up mountains, and the former mother wishes their kid could have healthy hobbies like the latter even though the former is likely psychologically normal while the latter is clearly mentally ill. My devotion to this blog is far more normal and admirable than anyone’s hiking hobby, and I don’t see how this is even debatable.
It’s a social activity, which is really odd to me. It strikes me as deeply anti-social. How do you bond with people when you’re hiking? I bond with people by sitting in low decibel level venues and talking. Slow walks are good, too. Hiking is not conducive to talking. Are these people verbally challenged, the sort who find grunts and audible exhalations to be the most comfortable form of communicating? I’ve never had a good conversation while hiking. I’m still very talkative, I don’t let a high heart rate and accelerated breathing shut me up, but it is often hard to walk side by side with people so that they can hear you well, and few others are game conversationalists. On one of Meghalaya’s more difficult hikes up several thousand steps, as I was voicing my grand theories of the universe, my wife said “Why don’t you save your breath?” I’m not sure anybody has ever uttered a more hurtful sentence to me, even if she meant it more literally than the expression is typically used.
My condescending view is that most people don’t actually like hiking, they just like telling people (themselves included) that they hiked, and they bond with people not over anything they do while hiking, but over the shared feeling of accomplishment they have for finishing the hike, because they can’t think of anything actually meaningful to do with their lives. Is this off base? And some people are just in it to take/post photos. I hate those people. Others are simply more outdoorsy than me for weird genetic reasons. I respect that. Good for them. They probably have more neanderthal DNA or something.
I don’t entirely dislike hiking, though. I quite like aspects of it. It’s way better than going to the beach. I still think it’s kind of a waste of time though. But I only hike in places like Meghalaya where there’s nothing else to really do. If there were a nice movie theater, I can assure you I would not have spent over a dozen hours hiking while I was there.
I’m glad I went for these hikes, though. I got a lot out of them. I’ll say the two lengthy hikes I did in Meghalaya were the best hikes I’ve ever done in my life, and were actually amazing and totally worth my time. I wouldn't say that about most hikes that I've done in my life, though.
Here is a list of five things I like about hiking:
1. Natural beauty, obviously, which goes beyond nice views and what I could see just by driving somewhere remote. I see many unusual and sometimes funny looking plants and insects, this makes me happy. Sometimes I get to eat wild fruit, though my wife usually doesn't let me. Sometimes I see interesting birds or other animals, but that’s less frequent. There is also the seclusion, the unpolluted sounds of rivers and insects and wind. I do like being in nature, and you have to hike to get the full immersion in it. Many hikes I've done have been too challenging to appreciate the beauty, though, as I'm constantly looking down and even when I slow down I'm too hot, sweaty, tired, hungry, etc to appreciate the nice places I'm in.
2. I find the strenuous physical activity to be creatively stimulating. While hiking I randomly think of solutions to problems with old screenplays of mine that I haven’t touched in a decade. I think of offbeat arguments that I feel like sending to friends in troll-ish texts. Etc. There are other places to get strenuous physical activity, but I find the entire concept of gyms and working out to be weird and depressing, and also gyms are probably too close to other distractions to stimulate thoughts. A hike is properly disconnected from the real world without the ability to easily step back into it, and thus it is more freeing. The exercise part of it is good, too.
3. I like the sense of adventure, to some extent. I like pretending I’m in some historical adventure movie.
4. I get to access to remote village cultures that wouldn’t be accessible otherwise. However this has happened so rarely and with such limited engagement that it is more theoretical. I wish I could tell you that by hiking to remote villages in Meghalaya I got to eat some amazing, unique village food, but actually I ate maggi noodles (my first and only time eating them in my life). There is some cultural value to hiking though. The landscape is part of the unique identity of each place, and it informs other parts of the identity, so thus it has educational and emotional value beyond just being nice to look at.
5. I couldn’t think of a fifth thing.
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