Wishing for rain…

May 7th, 2007  |  Published in India & Around, Living, Nature & Wildlife, Personal, Photography, Sports & Adventure, Travel  |  20 Comments

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Responses

1. Mehak says:
   

   May 7th, 2007 at 2:32 pm (#)

   Lov­ing your trav­el­ogue Anita :)

2. vinod says:
   

   May 8th, 2007 at 9:28 am (#)

   Yet another good episode …

3. Gaurav says:
   

   May 9th, 2007 at 10:06 am (#)

   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)

4. angshuman says:
   

   May 9th, 2007 at 5:14 pm (#)

   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 :)

5. Nandish says:
   

   May 11th, 2007 at 8:17 pm (#)

   Hi,
   Absolutely adore your blog…
   Your pho­tog­ra­phy is awesome…

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

6. Arun says:
   

   May 15th, 2007 at 10:19 am (#)

   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?

7. anita says:
   

   May 15th, 2007 at 5:44 pm (#)

   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!

8. Jeff says:
   

   May 16th, 2007 at 10:39 am (#)

   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..

9. Anita says:
   

   May 16th, 2007 at 12:40 pm (#)

   thanks jeff! glad you’re trav­el­ling along too :)

   ker­ala is def­i­nitely on my list this monsoon!

10. Praveen says:
    

    May 16th, 2007 at 2:02 pm (#)

    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

11. zeya says:
    

    May 17th, 2007 at 11:04 am (#)

    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

12. Just a little something » More tales from the North East says:
    

    August 10th, 2008 at 10:48 am (#)

    […] — My orig­i­nal post on Cherrapunjee […]

13. ayan says:
    

    August 29th, 2008 at 11:32 am (#)

    This is beautiful!!

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16. lostonthestreet says:
    

    January 27th, 2009 at 11:38 am (#)

    have linked u up in a post on cherra

17. There are caves and then there are caves « Lost on the street says:
    

    January 27th, 2009 at 11:58 am (#)

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

18. There are caves and then there are caves « Three girls with Gypsy Feet says:
    

    May 13th, 2009 at 11:07 pm (#)

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

19. Just a little something Wishing for rain | patio umbrella says:
    

    June 18th, 2009 at 8:59 am (#)

    […] 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 […]

20. Carol Cariello says:
    

    July 15th, 2010 at 12:22 pm (#)

    We really enjoy what you write on here. We try and read your blog every day so keep up the good work!

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