up in the clouds Far away in the northeastern hills lies a land largely ignored by everyone but meteorologists, adventurers and, oh yes, hardcore rockers. Vivek Menezes explains why is ’s coolest new frontier. Photographs by Tom Parker

!"# !"$ ‘He who has not trodden the rock bottom of these precipices can never claim he really knows his land’ —KYNPHAM SING NONGKYNRIH, KHASI POET

hen the mist cleared at with geraniums and anthuriums and These are Meghalaya’s , Wdaybreak, I lost my heart to . rows and rows of potted orchids. which came under British control after Nothing could be seen when we Enormous, slow-moving butter"ies a brutal three-year war, and were soon arrived the night before, nosing slowly wobbled through the clear morning rolled into colonial Assam along with through the murk. But sunrise revealed air. Soon, the mossy paths !lled the adjacent Garo and Jaintia hills (as we were poised on the knife-edge of with red-cheeked children in bright well as present-day Nagaland, Mizoram a breathtakingly narrow ridge. Far cardigans and matching tartan kilts, as and Arunachal Pradesh). This culturally below us, on one side, the waterlogged though they had walked out of a fairy distinct region was renamed Meghalaya plains of Bangladesh reached pale to tale. Then, a group of young mothers, when it became India’s 21st state in the horizon. On the other side, steep wearing shawls clasped at the shoulder 1972. The poetically named ‘abode of jungle gorges receded into the distance, and falling to their ankles, looked up to the clouds’ (in Sanskrit) is one part of studded with waterfalls that gushed us, agape, and chorused “Khublei!” the North-East where travel is now into the void. We found ourselves “Khublei,” we stammered back. unrestricted, albeit under a highly trans!xed. It felt like we had reached Then, the unspoken, irrepressible visible blanket of military security. The view from Mawshamok, the very end of the world. thought—could this still be India? More than 90 percent of Meghalaya’s 14km from Cherrapunjee, The rising sun’s warm glow brought Five thousand feet above Sylhet, citizens have tribal ancestry. Of these, looking into the flooded the rest of the village into view. We Bangladesh, Laitkynsew is just the Garos form a signi!cant minority plains of Bangladesh saw neat little tin-roofed houses with a dusting of small buildings that spill at about 35 percent of the population. Opposite: A Khasi man scrubbed façades, tidy gardens lined down a humpbacked mountain ridge. But it is the million-plus Khasis wearing a traditional hat

!!% !!" who dominate the culture, economy and politics of the state. Even in the multicultural babel of the subcontinent, this tribe stands out as unique. When I visited this summer, the monsoon was of!cially still weeks away, but Laitkynsew had already totalled 5,500mm of precipitation. That’s 18 feet of ‘pre-monsoon showers’. In Cherrapunjee, 15km up the road, the resident meteorologist had registered a much higher total. Sohra, as Cherrapunjee is called in Meghalaya, is one of the wettest places on the planet. It often gets more rain in a single day than most other places total in a year. In June 1995, for example, the town was deluged with !ve feet of rain in just 24 hours. The annual totals are even more astonishing; Sohra copped 24,555mm of rain in 1974. That’s river- deep, at more than 80 feet. Speeding down the mountainside to IT IS THE MILLION-PLUS Sohra, with Khasi blues on the radio, KHASIS WHO DOMINATE we !nd the town bazaar seething with action. It’s a farmers’ market with THE CULTURE, ECONOMY hand-woven baskets, fresh bamboo AND POLITICS OF shoots wrapped in banana leaves, dried !sh, and bulbous urns of golden MEGHALAYA. EVEN IN Sohra honey. The entire back of the THE MULTICULTURAL market is a series of yards totally given up to betel nut, the essential staple of BABEL OF THE Khasi life and key ingredient of the SUBCONTINENT, THIS ubiquitous kwai, which reddens every mouth (and street corner) in view. TRIBE STANDS OUT Sohra arrays itself along the crest of a thickly forested canyon, in sight of a dozen surging, silver waterfalls. The dappled blue-grey expanse of the plains shimmers beyond like a becalmed ocean. The 18th-century English traveller, Robert Lindsay’s account of the landscape is a typical reaction of the time. “One of the most stupendous amphitheatres in the To p row : A Khasi villager sits and remained in that spot till light world. The mountain appears to rise outside his hut; sunset at began to fade. abruptly from the watery plain, and is Cherrapunjee; a church in Till Independence, the best Cherrapunjee covered with the most beautiful foliage way to approach this town, and all Centre row: Traditional Khasi and fruit-trees which seem to grow broth; the Mawsmai cave, just of the Khasi hills, was along the spontaneously from the crevices of the outside of Cherrapunjee waterways from Kolkata and Dhaka to lime-rock. A more romantic or more Lower row: The afternoon mist Pandua, a riverside training post now beautiful situation could not be found in Cherrapunjee; betel nuts in Bangladesh, just miles below from than the one before me.” on sale at Sohra market; where we were standing. It was this The vast mountain fell away at our a wayside waterfall on the way centuries-old route that witnessed the to Cherrapunjee feet in shades of green and blue. The Above: A priest stands on arrival of Thomas Jones, a carpenter’s air was !lled with the sound of water the porch of a Catholic church son from Wales who clambered up the gushing from cataracts to the valley in Laitkynsew mountain to Sohra on 22 June 1841, far below. We discovered that it was and promptly started off the central impossible to tear ourselves away, event in modern Khasi history.

!!! !!& A Khasi woman stands on one of the famous living root bridges of Nongriat village

!!' !!( ‘One of the most stupendous amphitheatres in the world. A more romantic or more beautiful situation could not be found than the one before me’ !HISTORIAN ROBERT LINDSAY ON SOHRA

Tapti Barooah, manager of Rosavilla, enjoys a cup of tea on the guest-house porch

ones remains a paradoxical promoting coal-!red kilns, sending couple of hours. A mistake, because the !gure—a missionary who didn’t Sohra roaring into the Industrial Age. area merits much closer inspection— convert anyone and was eventually Above all, Jones learned the Khasi ideally accompanied by a stay at the expelled from his own church. language, transcribed it into the Roman Cherrapunjee Holiday Resort in Yet, because of him, Khasi script, and published its !rst dictionary. Laitkynsew. Staffed by indefatigable Presbyterians now vastly outnumber Khasi is a language unique to the Khasi women, this minuscule hotel is an the original Welsh adherents. Jones subcontinent, the only one from the oasis of civilisation at the end of would have been amazed to learn that Mon-Khmer group, out of the more a long road through rugged wilderness. more than three lakh Khasis rallied than 450 languages spoken here. Until Its very existence is tribute to the in a single day to honour the 150th Jones intervened, Khasi did not have a perseverance of owners Dennis and anniversary of his arrival in Sohra in written script and had been designated Carmela Rayen, whose hard work 1991, while his ‘mother church’ back for extinction by the colonists. This is has created a unique opportunity for in Wales has dwindled to just about why all Khasis, regardless of religion, visitors to experience this destination. 30,000 members in total. credit Jones with creating the means to “Honestly, I felt in between heaven From his !rst days in the Khasi sustain their culture. Their success set and hell when we !rst started,” hills, Jones immediately distinguished off a cultural revolution in the region: Carmela Rayen says, shaking her head, himself—and aggravated colonial the Garos, Mizos and Nagas followed as we watch a slow beeline of taxis head and church authorities—by throwing the Khasi example one after the other. downhill from the resort. “I have had himself into the service of the Each is now dominated by a Christian to refuse so many customers today. But tribal community. He taught them majority, using the Roman script. unless you were here at the beginning, The majestic Nohkalikai accounting, ending a legacy of cheating Most of Sohra’s visitors check out you could never imagine how tough Falls, which are the by middlemen from the plains. He the view from designated tourist spots, it was. We found it hard to persuade fourth-highest in the world revolutionised their lime industry by and wheel in and out of town in a people to come to Laitkynsew.”

!!) !!* that can extend across long distances. These are formed into improbably sophisticated suspension bridges, which hang high over the mountain rivulets that tear down the slopes with tremendous force. Over time, the roots reinforce each other into strong and durable spans; we tramped across and back, and marvelled.

he indigenous people of the Khasi hills refer to themselves Tas Ki Hynniew Trep, or ‘the people of the seven huts’. Their own religion, Niam Khasi—still practised by 40 percent of modern Khasis— recounts a descent from heaven into their homeland via the Lum Sohpet Bneng peak, the very ‘navel of heaven’, created for their sole use by the divinity U Blei. It is interesting to note that 150 years of Christian evangelism has not at all shaken the integrity of their tribal ‘we found shillong identity, or diminished their reliance on a strictly matriarchal culture. throbbing with an Matriarchy, as practised among unmistakeable big-town the Khasis, is also strongly matrilocal, which makes it unique in the modern vibe... complete with world. Family descent is strictly through teenagers flirting in the mother—children take her family name, and she owns all the property. one-room restaurants If you only have boys, bad luck: your over soya beans and family name dies out. In their system, smoked pork, dressed in the most important child is the khaduh, the youngest daughter. She inherits mtv-inspired outfits’ the family property, and is charged with looking after the older generation’s welfare. “Roads pockmarked by jumbo pits, cars do twist dancing”—that’s Shillong armela Rayen is from Sohra, To p row : Arrows for the daily Teer described by the brilliant Khasi poet, a local. Along with her South event; a Teer betting sheet ; Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih. Anjum Indian husband, she has college kids strike a pose Hasan, another poet who grew up C Middle row: A local taxi in painstakingly catalogued all the unique there, calls Shillong ‘a hill-forti!ed city Shillong; a view of city houses natural and cultural marvels of the built on a slope of cars’. You get the point—traf!c is surrounding landscape. The Rayens Lower row: A local teenager- packed solid at every intersection in brought the living root bridges of the shows o! his branded sneakers; Meghalaya’s capital. The last of!cial East Khasi hills to the attention of the plums displayed in Shillong census in 2001 registers this city’s world. These indigenous engineering market; one of the teacups population at 2.6 lakh, but that marvels can only be reached by rough- at Rosaville number is obviously a distant memory. Above: A grand piano dominates hewn stone staircases set in vertiginous the lobby of the Ri Kynjai A more realistic guess would be three lines straight down the mountainside. times as many. From our !rst drive The Khasis around Laitkynsew have through its rain-slicked streets, we probably been building these bridges found Shillong throbbing with an for millennia, because some examples unmistakable big-town vibe. Actually, are obviously many centuries old. They this undulating city, laid across a series carefully train secondary roots of !cus of pine-clad hills, has never been elastica through hollowed-out trunks of a backwater—it was the capital of betel nut trees, to become living ropes Assam for a full century.

!!# !!$ Niam Khasi recounts a descent from heaven into their homeland via Lum Sohpet Bneng peak, the very ‘navel of heaven’

Hotelier, developer and ace guitarist Prabhat Sawyan strikes a pose at the Ri Kynjai resort

Singularities abound on every family of Raibahadur Kanaklal Barua, Under our host’s guidance, we corner in Shillong. There are tiny a Raj-era litterateur and historian, realise that Shillong is all discrete booths manned by bookies where bets whose photographs lend atmosphere neighbourhoods, connected by narrow, are taken for the unique daily ritual of to its high-ceilinged rooms. Soak in the circuitous roads, vaguely reminiscent of Teer, the archery gambling that takes ambience as manager Tapti Barooah 1970s Hong Kong before the highways place at the Polo Grounds each day talks you through the sights: “The were built. Some localities have rustic at 4.15pm and 5.15pm. We join the Shillong peak is my favourite place to character, notably Iewduh—the dense, peaceful mélee at the site of action; go to, since you get an amazing view of dingy warren of stalls that is the largest a scrum of locals line up behind the the whole town from up here,” and the market in the region. Other parts of bowsmen, then a shout and the arrows things to do: “I love spending time at the city retain a faded colonial "avour, "y in their buzzing hundreds to the Golf Links,” (an 18-hole golf course). like the overrated tourist attraction of bolster-sized target across a small !eld. We were lucky to !nd a room in the Ward’s Lake. Far more interesting is Next, the of!cials take over and count newly restored Aerodene Cottage, a Laitumkrah, wall-to-wall schools and down the total which found the target, pleasant colonial-era hideaway close to colleges, where the teenagers "irt in always hundreds, often more than the town centre, managed by Sharlene out!ts copied stitch-perfect from MTV, a thousand. The last two digits of the Chatelier Das, a local of Anglo-Indian and crowd into one-room restaurants total make up the winning number. ancestry. “This place gets into your to feast on sticky fermented soya beans Given its considerable charms, blood and then you’re in Shillong and smoked pork. Shillong’s tourism sector is relatively for life and can’t escape even if you This is the Shillong that intrigues, stunted. But there are a few gems worth wanted to,” she sighs over a cup of tea that distinctive intersection of a mention. Rosavilla is one of the !nest laced with Sohra honey, recounting unself-conscious westernisation heritage bungalows left standing in the many roads she travelled before and !ercely guarded tribal integrity. Shillong. It was built in 1935 by the returning home. Comparisons don’t do it justice. The view from Ri Kynjai resort at night

!&% !&" A lesson underlined on an overcast 24 May, when we joined a crowd of schoolchildren to celebrate Bob Dylan’s birthday with Lou Majaw, Shillong legend and Khasi icon. Ever since the ’60s, Majaw has lived a freewheeling rock-and-roll lifestyle that has become ingrained in his city’s cultural landscape. Now the Khasi stronghold is routinely labelled ‘India’s rock capital’. So we knew what to expect from the stylish impresario hosting Shillong’s 39th annual Bob Dylan birthday celebrations. But Majaw’s backup band, The Bad Monkeys, made us sit up with a start, as they tore through a superb original set. And then the youngest of kids took the stage—it is impossible to describe how hard those little Khasi boys and girls rocked the hillside with their own cover of a Bob Dylan classic.

rabhat Sawyan tells me, “We Khasis aren’t like anyone else in need to know: meghalaya the world, and we don’t want to P BEST TIME TO VISIT here. Admire the heritage hotel, in pork cooked with be any different.” We’ve just had coffee March to July: The rope bridges, a convenient sesame seeds, or at Ri Kynjai, the sole luxury resort in climate is pleasant shop at the location just down fermented soya Meghalaya. Sawyan is the owner and and cool. Also, Sohra market the road from beans. Don Bosco architect of this resort. He’s also Christmas is a big and explore the Laitumkrah. Square, Shillong a leading developer in Meghalaya, festival here. caves at Krem (097740-65366; Cloud 9 owner of the Shillong Lajong football GETTING THERE Mawmluh. www.aerodene.com) A great option team, and, naturally, an ace guitarist. The closest airport is Shillong (one hour Doubles from for a night out in from Cherrapunjee): Shillong. Set atop Ri Kynjai, located 25km outside at Guwahati. IndiGo, 2,500 and Tee o! at the Golf the Hotel Centre Shillong, caps a trip to Meghalaya in Jet Connect Rosavilla, Shillong SpiceJet fly direct Course or go A homely vibe and Point, it features an terri!c style with its spacious rooms from Mumbai. Go archaeological at the one of the finest unbeatable view panelled with Khasi pine and private Air, Indian, IndiGo, Nartiang monoliths. heritage bungalows of the city and the balconies overlooking the serene JetLite and SpiceJet Don’t miss the daily left standing in surrounding hillside. Umiam Lake. The hotel spa features fly direct from New archery gambling Shillong. Police Bazaar, therapeutic Khasi massages and its Delhi. SpiceJet ritual. Spend two (0364 223-1248) Shillong (0364 boutique features the best selection of flies direct from days here. Doubles from 222-0272) handicrafts we saw in the region. Bengaluru. A daily Umiam (one hour 2,000 WHAT TO SEE Sawyan leads me across the lawn to chopper service from Shillong): Ri Kynjai, Umiam Don Bosco Centre get a proper look at what he considers runs between Spend your last The only luxury for Indigenous Guwahati and two days masheer resort in Meghalaya his !nest contribution to architecture. Cultures Shillong. Fare: fishing at Ranikor or is spread out over A landmark museum Ri Kynjai is set into the hillside above 1,200 per person. at the Ri Kynjai spa. a hillside overlooking with separate the lake, and most of the hotel is www.megtourism. WHERE TO STAY Umiam Lake. It galleries dedicated invisible as you approach from the gov.in Cherrapunjee features an excellent to the various rear. From here, all you can see are NH-40 from Holiday Resort, restaurant and spa. cultures of the !ve tribal cottages, with the traditional Guwahati to Shillong Laitkynsew (0364 257-0456; North-East. Highly upturned boat-shaped roofs rendered takes about three Basic but clean and www.rikynjai.com) recommended. beautifully in strips of metal. Sawyan hours. Taxis can be comfortable, with Doubles from Mawlai, Shillong is talking about 5,000 years of history rented in Guwahati. helpful management 5,000 (0364 255-0260; in these hills, describing his work as Meghalaya Transport and decent food. WHERE TO EAT www.dbcic.org) Corp,Shillong (0364 (096153-38500; Shillong Golf Course D Jadoh

R ‘an architectural expression of point 222-3200) www.cherrapunjee. It’s the place to The 18-hole course of origin’ and ‘the apex of organic SUGGESTED SIX! com) Doubles from try the famous is the oldest in monsoon engineering’. It all makes DAY ITINERARY 1,400 Jadoh, the red rice India and o!ers the

T LITTLEFO complete sense, and I say so. He smiles. R Cherrapunjee Aerodene Cottage, which is served wettest tee-o! point “You’re in the Khasi hills, man!” (About two hours Shillong alongside local in the world. ROBE One of the five tribal : For more www. cntraveller.in from Umroi airport): A beautifully favourites like Polo Ground (0364

cottages at Ri Kynjai MAP See What to Pack, page 294 Spend two days renovated tiny smoked beef jerky, 259-1016)

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