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India & Around

Wishing for rain…

North East Chron­i­cles: On March 18, we visit the town of Cher­ra­pun­jee, about a two hour drive from Shil­long, through curvy roads and some beau­ti­ful scenery. Cher­ra­pun­jee, until recently, held the record of being one of the wettest regions on earth.

Cher­ra­pun­jee, which is known by the local name of Sohra, is located in the East Khasi Hills at an alti­tude of 1484 metres. The aver­age rain­fall between the years 1973–2006 has been 39.14 feet, and that’s a lot of rain!

Unfor­tu­nately, due to below aver­age rain­fall in 2006, it had to forgo its title of the wettest place to its neigh­bour Mawsyn­rem, but still holds stub­bornly to its reputation.

Viewpoint
A view­point in Cherrapunjee


I come across some incred­i­ble sta­tis­tics: “The rain­fall in 1974 at Cher­ra­pun­jee was the high­est recorded annual rain­fall in any one place in any one year in the whole world. On 16th June 1995, it rained 1,563 mm in 24 hours (i.e. 5.12 feet : i.e. 61.53 inches).” Com­pare this with Lon­don, which has about 600 mm of aver­age rain in a year and you’ll get an idea! (info from Cherrapunjee.com)

Ban­ga­lore would drown if it rained that much, I’m thinking!

We’re on the road from Shil­long to this small town. Hav­ing woken up late, after a huge buf­fet break­fast, we take along a guide with us and head towards Cher­ra­pun­jee. The vil­lages on the way are sit­u­ated right on the road. And most houses have flower pots and cute lit­tle gar­dens in the front, giv­ing them a bright and cheery look.

Red!
Pretty red blos­som in someone’s garden!

We stop at one such vil­lage and meet a bunch of excited kids. They’re not only incred­i­bly cute, but they’re also very friendly!

Take my picture! Kid in the blue hat!
Cute kids on the way to Cherrapunjee

Unfor­tu­nately for us, it’s a hot day. We reach around 11 am and with the sun con­tin­u­ing to get stronger, Venkatesh exclaims, “Where are the rains?”

It isn’t the rainy sea­son of course. For the best time to wit­ness and expe­ri­ence the rains, visit Cher­ra­pun­jee between May and Octo­ber. So it’s more a case of bad tim­ing in our case. We spend some time on the rocky view­point look­ing at the Nohka­likai falls : this is a majes­tic water­falls — but a sea­sonal one. It depends on the mon­soons to cre­ate its magic, so we can only imag­ine what it might be like in full flow. I’ve been to Cher­ra­pun­jee a few times in my child­hood, but I don’t have any clear rec­ol­lec­tions of my ear­lier vis­its either

From the falls, go across to the Mawsmai lime­stone caves. The rather eerie inte­ri­ors have these inter­est­ing lime for­ma­tions every­where. And in some parts you have to actu­ally bend dou­ble to pass from one cave to another : the open­ings are rather small and narrow.

While emerg­ing from one such open­ing, Deep­san walks directly into one of the over­hang­ing rocks. While we hold our breath. Thank­fully, he didn’t sus­tain any seri­ous injury (though I thought I heard some­thing crack!) except a really nasty look­ing mark, which soon turned deep red in colour.

After that, we were all a lit­tle more careful.

Excreation! Cavemen!
The Mawsmai Caves in Cherrapunjee

My school friend Christy had told me about Cherra Resort, so I give her a call to find out if we could have lunch there. She gets it orga­nized and we drive about 11 kms from Cher­ra­pun­jee towards the resort.

Cherra Resort turns out to be a pretty lit­tle homely place (and really more like a home­s­tay than a resort), perched on a hill­top, with a nice view of the sur­round­ing hills. The owner, we find out is a South Indian who’s set­tled there since a long time hav­ing mar­ried a local.

Red Umbrella
Under the red umbrella, Cherra Resort, Cherrapunjee

The meal is large and sat­is­fy­ing, besides the fact that we are all really hun­gry. After a round of dessert, we laze around in the bench in the lawn and then around 4.30 pm, when the light starts going out in the east, it’s time to bid good­bye to Cherra Resort.

I look up at the skies : hop­ing one last time that maybe there’s a chance of a down­pour! But it’s still very clear.

Sigh! We’ll have to come back to Cher­ra­pun­jee in the rains…

Links:
Wikipedia
Megha­laya Tourism
Cherra Resort
Ramakr­ishna Mission

The Cher­ra­pun­jee Album on Flickr.com

Discussion

22 Responses to “Wishing for rain…”

  1. Lov­ing your trav­el­ogue Anita :)

    Posted by Mehak | May 7, 2007, 2:32 pm
  2. Yet another good episode …

    Posted by vinod | May 8, 2007, 9:28 am
  3. Hey.. I’m lov­ing your blog. Toooo good. I would like to do a review / show­cas­ing of your blog on mine. I think blogs like yours must be appre­ci­ated a lot lot more..

    Regards
    Gaurav

    (http://menghani.blogspot.com)

    Posted by Gaurav | May 9, 2007, 10:06 am
  4. Going to cher­ra­punji dur­ing July, when the two arms of the mon­soon meet is some expe­ri­ence. NE inspite of its prob­lems dur­ing the mon­soon is at its beau­ti­ful best. (like kerela)

    btw, I have been read­ing your blog incon­spic­u­ously for some­time. love the pic­tures and write­ups. claude renault would have been proud of tak­ing some pic­tures himself :)

    Posted by angshuman | May 9, 2007, 5:14 pm
  5. Hi,
    Absolutely adore your blog…
    Your pho­tog­ra­phy is awesome…

    Also one thing, just fig­ured out…we work in d same company… :)

    Posted by Nandish | May 11, 2007, 8:17 pm
  6. Hey, is the first image that of a val­ley halfway from Shil­long to Cher­ra­pun­jee? I think they had some name for that place.. can’t recall..

    Where are the pho­tos of the falls? And did you visit those famed nat­ural bridges?

    Posted by Arun | May 15, 2007, 10:19 am
  7. Mehak: Glad to hear that!

    vinod: thanks!

    Gau­rav: thanks :)

    ang­shu­man: best time to go! hope to enjoy your­self. and thanks for that lovely compliment! :)

    Nan­dish: thank you! it seems we do :)

    Arun: The first image is from Nohka­likai falls in Cherra. There was no water in the falls! We didn’t go to the bridges in Cherra but in Mawlyn­nong, I’ve writ­ten about it in my next post!

    Posted by anita | May 15, 2007, 5:44 pm
  8. Great trav­elouge Anita!!Keep it up.I can travel all around India sit­ting in my room because of peo­ple like you.
    If you want to feel the beauty of mosoon,welcome to Kerala.It rains the best there..

    Posted by Jeff | May 16, 2007, 10:39 am
  9. thanks jeff! glad you’re trav­el­ling along too :)

    ker­ala is def­i­nitely on my list this monsoon!

    Posted by Anita | May 16, 2007, 12:40 pm
  10. The foto is really nice would like to know more abt that place.…im plan­ning a trip there can u please refer me is there any tribal peo­ples i’m just mak­ing notes and doc­u­men­try film regard­ing that place.…would like ur assistance

    Posted by Praveen | May 16, 2007, 2:02 pm
  11. wow!! I love your spirit..
    Next birth I am reliev­ing myself from earn­ing a liveli­hood and play­ing wife and mom games.. You sounds so much fun
    Keep post­ing..
    Zeya

    Posted by zeya | May 17, 2007, 11:04 am
  12. This is beautiful!!

    Posted by ayan | August 29, 2008, 11:32 am
  13. have linked u up in a post on cherra

    Posted by lostonthestreet | January 27, 2009, 11:38 am
  14. We really enjoy what you write on here. We try and read your blog every day so keep up the good work!

    Posted by Carol Cariello | July 15, 2010, 12:22 pm
  15. is May a good time to travel to Meghalaya?

    Posted by swati | April 9, 2012, 4:31 pm
  16. @swati: after the rainy sea­son is bet­ter. not sure if it starts rain­ing in may. also, depends on where you want to go. places like cher­ra­pun­jee are def­i­nitely bet­ter right after the rains if you want to enjoy the beau­ti­ful waterfalls.

    Posted by Anita | April 11, 2012, 9:21 pm

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  4. […] (View of Cher­ra­punji from Cherra resort) For details about Cherra Resort read here. […]

  5. […] (View of Cher­ra­punji from Cherra resort) For details about Cherra Resort read here. […]

  6. […] Just a lit­tle some­thing Wish­ing for rain Posted by root 3 min­utes ago (http://www.anitabora.com) Under the red umbrella cherra resort cher­ra­pun­jee please note com­ment mod­er­a­tion is enabled and may delay your com­ment designed by kaushal sheth based on andreas02 and green­track pow­ered by word­press Dis­cuss  |  Bury |  News | Just a lit­tle some­thing Wish­ing for rain […]

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