Crystal clear rivers, misty hills and villages that look straight out of a fairy tale. One of the seven sisters, Meghalaya is on everyone’s checklist. Read on for a detailed guide on planning your trip to this north-eastern beauty
The blog contains following sections:
🗓️ High level plan
One would need at least a week to cover Meghalaya
- Shillong (3 days) – Umiam Lake, Mawphanlur, Elephant falls, Mawlynnong, Living root bridge,
- Dawki (1 day) – Boating, camping on the river bank
- Cherrapunji (2 days) – Nohkalikai falls, Trek to double decker bridge & rainbow falls, Mawsmai caves
- Kaziranga (1 day) – Jeep safari, Tea estate walk
If you have 3-4 more days, you could add Arunachal (Tawang and Sela Pass) too
🚊Transport
Guwahati is the nearest airport. Best to take a flight to Guwahati Airport and then travel on road for different cities. One could either hire a cab with driver or chose to rent a car and drive around. Just a word of caution – the roads in North east are narrow and steep at times. So we just hired a cab with a driver. It costed us around INR 30,000 including petrol for a cab (Innova) with driver for 7 days. We were a group of 5 friends
🏠 Stay
When we visited in Dec 2019, we were not able to find good properties on online portals in places like Cherrapunji & Kaziranga. Hence we made bookings only after reaching these cities. However, they are now on the online portals. Listing down the links to the places we stayed below:
- Shillong – Brio Homestay
- Cherrapunji – Sa-I-Mika Resort
- Dawki – Riverside Camp
- Kaziranga – Dhanshree Resort
📝 Detailed itinerary
Day 1: Land in Guwahati, Head to Shillong
We landed in Guwahati around at noon. Cab driver picked us up from the airport and started heading to Shillong (3-4 hours drive). On the way we stopped by at Umiam lake. We took a boat tour and later sat in the garden area watching sunset over the lake. Reached Shillong around 7PM and checked into our Airbnb
Day 2: Day trip to Mawphanlur & Elephant falls
Headed to Mawphanlur (2 hour drive), which is a picturesque hamlet around 2 hours drive from Shillong. Stopped at Elephant falls on the way. You need to walk a bit to reach the waterfall point. Decent place to stop by. Reached Mawphanlur
It was so peaceful area. There was literally no one apart from us in the entire area. Surrounded by green carpet of grass, beautiful lakes, hills at a distance and narrow roads leading to the hill top. There was no hawker or any other commercial activity. It is a very peaceful and serene place. There are no specific tourist activities one can indulge in here. One can walk in the green meadows, play in lake water, click few pictures and just relax. If you get bored, you can just drive to the next hill and enjoy a different view
Day 3: Mawlynnong, Living root bridge, Dawki
Headed to one of the Asia’s cleanest village, Mawlynnong (3 hours drive Shillong). On the way, stopped at Mawjngih Lapynshongdor view point for a scenic view of the Meghalaya mountains. You can also grab breakfast in one of the small restaurants located right next to the view point
Reached Mawlynnong. Walked around the cleanest roads & pretty houses with well-maintained gardens. First headed to the living root bridge – it is essentially suspension bridge created naturally from the roots of live plants. To reach the living root bridge area, one has to climb down 150-200 stairs – bridge is located over the bank of the Dawki river
Next went to the Bamboo tree house from which we got to see 360 degree view of the hills of India and plains of Bangladesh. Next made a quick stop at the Balancing rock which is essentially a huge boulder balancing on another rock at unusual angle
Had wholesome meal at one of the small eateries in the village and headed towards Dawki. One can see the Bangladesh border on the way. We had booked a tent on the banks of river Dawki for the night – we checked in and headed straight to boating before since it closes after sunset (costed INR 100 per person). The Dawki River is so clean that you can see the bottom of the river clearly most of the places. You can’t get enough of the turquoise clear water all around
Day 4: Cherrapunji, Nohkalikai waterfalls
Woke up early and went on a walk around Dawki River clicking few pictures. You get really good shots from the suspension bridge. Had breakfast and headed to Cherrapunji which is 3 hours on road
Stopped by at Cherrapunji cafe for lunch – which was once a dak bungalow. Since we were there during Christmas, it had been all decorated with Christmas theme. Apparently there was UFO sighting at this in 1967
Visited Nohkalikai waterfalls views point where you get an aerial view of the falls along with lush greenery around it. Since we had gone in December there was not much water. But in monsoon period one can witness the falls in full glory
We reached our stay (Sa-I-Mika Resort) around early evening. It is one the best resorts I have stayed in till date. The cottages are really well maintained – rustic and spacious. One can witness amazing sunset from the cottage. Cottages are located far from each other. There is also stream running next to the property which can be accessed by walk. It is a massive resort right in the nature with lot of open areas to walk and play around – a true nature retreat. Would highly recommend staying here
Day 5: Trek to double decker bridge and rainbow falls
It was a trek day. We planned to trek to Nongrait double decker bridge and Rainbow falls and return to Cherrapunji on the same day
Reached Tyrna around 8AM – it is the trek starting point and is just 20km away from Cherrapunji. The trek primarily involved climbing down and up the stairs through the forest. There were around 3500 stairs between Tyrna and Nongrait (roughly 4 km). The trail was very clearly marked out. There were lot of small shops and eateries operated by local villagers on the way. It took us roughly 2 hours to reach Nongrait which houses the beautiful double decker bridge over a river bank. We clicked few pictures, admired at the bridge and rested for 30 min at its base
Then headed to rainbow falls which is at distance of 3 km from the bridge. This trail has stairs in the beginning, followed by a few suspension bridges and living root bridges. At the end, there is no clear terrain as it is just a narrow path through the jungle. It took us 1.5 – 2 hours to reach the falls from the living root bridge. The water in the rainbow falls is bright turquoise blue. I had never seen such a colour of water in India. And we could spot a rainbow at the base of the falls and hence the name. We admired the waterfall from multiple points. Would advise not to get into the water since it is quite deep and there is no clear approach to the water. We rested for a while, ate some snacks and headed back to Tyrna. It took us roughly 4 hours to trek all the way back
Day 6: Mawsmai caves, Head to Kaziranga
Explored the Mawsmai caves in the morning – one of the few natural limestone caves in India. There were two caves – one of which was easily explorable by everyone the other one had some narrow paths and steep climbs hence might not be easy for everyone. Jumping, bending, crawling and squeezing through some sections inside the cave was a mini-adventure. Ease of access draws in a lot of tourists hence would recommend you to visit early in the morning
And then started our journey to Kaziranga National Park in Assam. Travelled for 7 hours and reached our resort which had great ambience and was pretty close to Kaziranga safari central gate
We took help of reception folks and made jeep safari bookings for the next day. It costed us around INR 3,000 for a jeep (can accommodate upto 6 people). You can find the latest rates and book online in advance here. We had visited Kohora (central) range which has the highest probability of Rhino spotting
Day 7: Kaziranga safari
Jeep was ready at the resort gate at 7AM. We entered through the central zone gate of Kaziranga. Since it was early morning, there was lot of mist on the way. The reserve forest area was so serene! We saw many birds and animals living in their natural habitat with almost nil human activity. There were many natural ponds and lakes along the route – it felt surreal. After driving around 1 hour into the forest, we got our first sighting of the one-horned rhino – what magnificent beast! We saw 3-4 more of them later and also spotted 5-6 elephants
We were back at the property by 10AM. Had breakfast and headed to a tea estate located nearby. We walked around the tea gardens and purchased some organic tea for home
We headed back to Guwahati post lunch to catch our flight back home
🧳AK’s Travel Tidbits 🧳
Try to get the earliest slot for safari since chances of spotting animals and birds is much higher early in the morning
One could also prefer doing Elephant safari – you will be able to get much closer to Rhino compared to jeep safari. However Jeep takes you across larger area of forest compared to Elephant and hence you get to see lot more animals and birds
Roamantic Affair 