Cherrapunjee

Day1: Delhi-Guwahati-Cherrapunjee

Day2: Cherrapunjee & Cherrapunjee - Mawlynnong

Day3: Mawlynnong & Mawlynnong - Shillong

Day4- Shillong

Day5: Shillong-Guwahati-Delhi

The hotel we were staying, was an ECO RESORT Sai-Mika, off course arranged by Nanu and verified by me. Huge open property, with spacious cottages build in old style. The place is very quiet and beautiful. The restaurant is a stand-out, decorated with portraits of Rock Stars, dim lighting, rock music (of 70s-80s) at backdrop and small sit-out with bonfire arrangement. Good Chinese food was served in a huge tiffin style box. I spent some alone time in the balcony just to soak the quite surroundings and appreciate the sight of diamond studded sky and then retired to sleep after finishing of some office work, which I forgot to do on Friday!!  

Morning 6.30, the sun was up with full swing, gazing right into your eyes. Our geyser wasn’t working, so we had to call Antanu to correct it. Due to this we were delayed by an hour. We wanted to start-off early as today was going to be the most tiring and adventurous day.

**Interesting Fact # 3: Living Route Bridges

The living root bridges, are the tree roots grown to the other end of the river to form a bridge. The Rubber fig tree routes are trained to grow through the hollow betel tree trunks (which are placed across the gap) until they root on the other side of the river/gap. The thin long and tender roots of trees are passed through the hollow halves of betel nut tree trunks and as the root grows the bridge takes it shape and strength. It generally takes 10- 15 years to grow a functional living root bridge. Stones and mud is put on the bridge to make the surface smoother and walkable.

As the bridge grows older it also grows stronger, they are naturally self-renewing and self-strengthening as the component roots grow thicker. These bridges in are approx. 150-200 years old.

 There are several living root bridges in this area. The most famous ones are Double Decker and Long Root Bridge. As the name suggests, the double decker bridge is grown in at two levels for crossing the same river. The Long root bridge is thinner and leaner in structure and around 100 feet long.

Front View of Dobule Decker; Living Root Bridge

The route to reach the double decker is not that easy. One has to climb down around 4000 stairs to reach the bridge and also climb those back to reach the car parking area.we started at around 9.15 AM. On the way we encountered beautiful sceneries of the lush green forest on both side of the stairs. At midway there is a villages, the route for Long Root Bridge and Double Decker Bridge diverts here. As suggested by Nanu we first went to Double Decker as it was quite far. Enroute Double Decker we found two rope bridges. The first one was small bridge build on the shallow flowing river. These had lean structure with just enough space for one person to cross at a time. At first those rope bridges look little too lean to cross but once we got on it, it felt perfectly safe and serene.

The unending Stairs

The second bridge was a two stage bride having a pillar in the middle to support the structure. This one had cleaner and bluer water flowing beneath it. The landscape was giving a feeling as if you have entered some live (water) painting having vibrant such blues, greens & browns, with colorful butterflies flying on the beautiful flowers blossomed here & there.

The Rope Bridge

Capturing that image in our mind we moved forward and after some time there we encountered our first living root bridge. It was a small one, giving a far view of the double decker towards its right. Now we climbed up a little to cross the Nongriat village and Reach Double Decker.

Side view of the Bridge

While returning we took the diversion towards the Long Root Bridge it was a 15 mins climb up to the bridge. And after that the mammoth stair-climb was staring at us. Somehow we managed to reach the parking at around 1.30 – 1.45 Pm, with no energy for doing even nothing.

**Interesting Fact # 4: Caves

Meghalaya is home for number of Caves especially in Khasi hills near Cherrapunjee. Just to name a few, Krem Liat Prah (Janita Hills) the longest caves in India, Siju Cave (Garo Hills) is famous for bas and offers some of the finest river passages. 

Then we went to visit Mawsmai Caves, small and fully commercialized caves just to get the feeling of the cave one can visit here. We couldn’t do full-fledged caving in Mawmluh Cave because of shortage of time, as that would have required minimum 6 hrs and full energy.

@Mawsmai Cave

Now we were heading to Mawlynnong, enroute we visited two water falls Nohkalikai and Dainthlen falls.

Sunset Near the Dainthlen Falls