Guwahati - Cherrapunjee-Guwahati

May 13, 2011

Hello,

I came down from my room for breakfast at 07:30 hrs while others had already had theirs at 07:00 hrs. Just as I started eating, the weather changed and it rained heavily for some time. The temperature dropped. Throughout the day the weather was cloudy.

We checked out of the Hotel, refueled the car and left for Sualkuchi, a place at a distance of about 35 km from Guwahati. Sialkuchi is one of the world’s largest weaving villages and is considered to be the Manchester of North East. The special golden silk of Assam known as Muga Silk is produced here and is the only place in the world where this kind of silk is produced. The population of this place is 55000 and over 20000 of them are weavers. There are over 18500 hand looms here. It is said that king Dharmapal brought 26 weaver families here in 11^th century AD and since then the people of Sualkuchi are engaged in this business.

We visited a weaving factory which had about 4 to 5 hand looms and a all women staff was busy weaving Sarees. One saree takes about five to six days to weave and the women are paid on a per piece basis. We were told that now days very little Munga Silk is produced here since the silk worms which produce this silk are getting extinct on account of oil exploration – actually I do not get the link between the two. However I think that this must be because of global worming, the average temperatures going up which the silk worms may not be able sustain. Hence the production of genuine pure Munga Silk Sarees has reduced considerably. These Sarees are available only at a few select places here and are expensive. Now largely silk is brought here from Bangalore and processed further in to yarn and then the fabric with traditional Assamies designs and art work.

The gentle man who was showing us this factory and giving us the information guided us to a shop where we could get genuine Munga silk Sarees from where I purchased one such piece for Veena.

We struck a conversation with the shop owner. Based on what he told us and the number of shops selling Silk textiles one can infer that Sualkuchi must be doing a turnover of hundreds of crores every year. We were told that there is 100% employment in this large village or small town.

From here we went to a place called Hajo. This is a place where there are shrines and temples dedicated to Vishnu, Shiva, Durga & Buddha as also a Muslim saint! Hayagreeva-Madhava, the horse headed avatara of Vishnu, is the most important temple of Hajo situated on the top of a hill called Manikuta. Though the present bulding was constructed by the Koch king Raghudevendranarayana in 1583 AD, the original temple was probably constructed in the 7^th century AD.

By now it was past 14:00 hrs and we were hungry. We stopped at a way side eatery had lunch and left for Shillong, Meghalay, the abode of clouds!

For going to Shillong one has to go via Guwahati taking the Guwahati bypass road. Almost as soon as we crossed Guwahati by the bypass, the hilly region begins. Till Guwahati we were on absolutely plain roads.

Road construction work is going on in a big way though the original road is very good. We stopped at a small shanty for a cup of tea which we had black since there was no milk available. There were two kittens playing with each other. Seeing Raju trying to click a picture of the kittens, the girl serving us the tea stopped him from doing so. She said that if a picture of Kittens is taken then either they die or run away!

We reached Shillong at 20:00 hrs and checked in to hotel Lake View. We had our dinner, chalked out tomorrow’s plan and are now ready to sleep.

It seems that our speed has dropped considerably and need to increase it. Let us see how it goes.

Bye for now. See you tomorrow at same place.

Good night!

May 14, 2011

Hi!

After having our breakfast at the hotel, we began our journey at 09:45 hrs to Cherapunjji, a place which reportedly has the highest rain fall in the world. The average annual rainfall here from 1973 to 2010 is 11903 mm. The rainfall in the year 2010 was 13472.4mm! Serious rainy season begins in March /April and goes on till October. So to say there are only two seasons here – its winter and rainy season.

One thing that we noticed in Meghalaya is that there is very little or no influences of Bengali accent on the way people speak. Also we did not feel that the people of Meghalay had distinct Mongoloid features.

It’s a short journey of about 60 km from Shillong to Cherapunjji by a winding road. The entire journey is simply beautiful with greenery all around you. As we ascended to a height of about over 4500 ft above msl a blanket of clouds enveloped us. The weather started getting chillier as we approach Chrapunjji. All along the route we could see coal mines and rampant quarrying activity wiping out the beautiful mountains. There are three four coking coal factories on the way and one cement plant at Cherrapunjji. The cement plant seemed to be in a dilapidated condition though working; nothing like the cement plants we see anywhere else.

At this point the odometer of the car had crossed 4000 kms!

We reached a place called Wahakala Tourist spot which is a small view point at an altitude of 5248 ft above msl, created for tourists to see the Wahakala waterfalls. We could not see anything from here because of the clouds in the valley known as white-out.

We reached Cherrapunjji at 12:30hrs. We were planning to visit the Nohkailikai waterfall today, but looking at the weather and there being very few hotels here we decided to first look for a hotel to stay in and then do the sightseeing. Mr. Phadke who had been to this place last year, recommended Cherrapunji Holiday Resort which is about 18 Km away from the main village/town. It’s a small place with 4 to 5 rooms but the location is phenomenal. We were disappointed that there were no rooms available here, but Angela, the girl who was looking after the place and who, I presume, was the owner’s daughter, offered to arrange for a guide to take us to one the most exciting places…the Living Root Bridge. After a light lunch we proceeded to the Living Root Bridge with Batsiem, our guide for this tour.

The way to the Living Root Bridge is a trek of about 2kms one way. It is downhill one way and uphill back. The gradient is very steep. It was slippery because of the moss that had grown on the stones which formed the main body of the trekking rout. It was a treacherous path! I was sweating profusely so much so that my jeans and T-shirt were soaked in sweat. I was finding it very difficult. Slowly in about two hour’s time we reached the spot we had gone to see.

The Living Root Bridge is a Bioengineering wonder. The Khasi tribe created these bridges by growing the roots of Indian Rubber Tree (Ficus Elastica) across streams at such an elevation that in spite of heavy rains which lead to flooding of stream, the bridge would not get submerged. These are like hanging bridges. The bridge that we saw was about 60 to 70 ft long and capable of taking the weight of about 40/50 people at a time. There is also another such bridge at another location which is a double-decker bridge, one bridge above the other. It takes about 20 yrs for one such bridge to form. The life span of these bridges is about 500 to 600 yrs! We were told that there are many such bridges in this region and it has been a common practice over the years to make such bridges in this region however the world came to know about it as recently as 2000 – 2004.

The owner of Cerrapunjjee Holiday Resort, Mr. Denis Ryan, who is an avid trekker, located this bridge in the year 2000 and put it on his website. In the republic day parade of 2004, a replica was showcased by the Meghalaya government. In June / July 2004 a team of Japanese Asahi TV channel came here and extensively covered this spot and showed it on their channel. This was followed by BBC, German News channels etc. I seriously wonder if any of the Indian TV channels have shown this marvel at all?!

We started our journey back from here at about 16:15. It was a really “uphill task”. I am sure for someone fitter than me this trek could be quite easy. Hats off to Phadke Ajoba (Grandfather in Marathi)….at about 70 years of age he did this much greater ease than me. For Raka it was a breeze. For Raju & I it was quite tough. At the final lap of the trek it had gotten dark and we had to walk our way in the light of batteries torches.

By the time we reached the resort we were very tired my clothes drenched in sweat. The weather had gotten chillier and I stared feeling very cold with my sweat soaked clothes on. It was about 19:30 and had no hotel to go to yet. We decided to have dinner here and requested the owner of Cherrapunjjee Holiday Resort to help us. He made a few phone calls and booked us in to Green Valley Resort about 15 kms away.

This really was no resort. It was a small property of 4 rooms with very basic amenities. I took a bath and am ready to crash for the night.

Good night and meet you again tomorrow.

May 15, 2011

Hi,

With all the adventure yesterday I woke up little late this morning.

The Green Valley Resort belongs to Sentila K Sangma. Her father belongs to the Naga tribe while mother belongs to the Garo tribe. She is a Christian. People here follow the matriarchal system where the husband goes to the house of the wife to live after marriage. The people here are converted Christians. There is a huge property of Ramkrishana Mission, who started working here after sensing that the people from this region are getting converted to Christianity. I really don’t want go in to this issue of conversions, forced or otherwise, on this forum.

We visited the Nohkalikai waterfall which is said to be the 3^rd or 4^th tallest waterfall in the world. There was a whiteout in the valley and we had to wait for about an hour or so to see the waterfall for some time and then once again the falls went behind the curtain of clouds. I did some video recording of the falls. It was beautiful…site for gods to see!

From here we went to Mawsmai caves. This cave is about 150 mtrs long and very narrow and short in height inside which there are formations of stalagmite. Phadke and I decided not to go and Raka and Raju said after returning from inside the cave that we missed nothing.

We had lunch here and started our journey back to Guwahati.

The traffic was very heavy. It was 19:30 by the time we reached Guwahati. We decided to stay here and proceed to Jorhat or if possible beyond tomorrow. I seriously have to take stock of the time factor and I think we need to speed up things.

Its 02:15hrs of 16^th and have to say Good night right away.

Meet you at the same place tomorrow!

Meet you at the same place tomorrow!