Thursday, June 12, 2008

North east voyage

Last month when mom and dad were here, we went on a week long north east trip, which spanned over Assam, Arunachal and Meghalaya and involved a travel of around 1600 km. The trip was beautiful and though we didnt finally go as per the original plan, the trip was great nonetheless. The intial plan was to go to Bomdila / Tawang in Arunachal, however weather and landslide in the hills made us restrict our trip to a place called Bhalukpong. Nothing much there, except a nice river, hills (hills just start here) and good weather. Here are some photos of the drive to bhalukpong -









Since the road trip up to Tawang was doubtful (in our car) and to hire a taxy was working out expensive (around 12grands for 3 days) we changed to plan 'B'. We set course for Shillong, the capital city of Meghalaya. The drive was nice,and when we reached Shillong, we realised why it is called Meghalaya - we were in clouds and it was raining continuously. Shillong is also known as the Scotland of the east - there are lush green meadows and the gently sloping hills have a great feel. In Shillong we visited the Elephant falls which is in three steps, very picturesque, but without too much of publicity - hardly anyone advertises the fact that there are so many beautiful places to be visited around shillong. We wish that there is more publicity and these places are made more tourist friendly - presently it is the typical indian tourist spot - lots of small shops selling chips, biscuit and tea. here are some snaps







Then we went to cherapunjee - had read about it for a long time in the geo books in school as well as the GK books. the place was very very picturesque, the drive amazing, hardly hill driving as it was more like driving on a plateau, waterfalls along the way making the beautiful green mountain even more beautiful.