Water World

The contender for the wettest place on earth is a region carved out of the rain. Cherrapunjee in Meghalaya is a repository of hidden facets, finds Deepika Belapurkar

The Guwahati travel agent's voice crackled with disbelief, when we asked him to add Cherrapunjee to our itinerary. He tried his utmost to pack us off to Majuli, then Khajiranga and finally in desperation Tawang. "Why Sohra (as the khasis call Cherrapunjee)?" he inquired with a trace of vexation. He was so sure that Cherrapunjee would lower us into the depths of despair by the time we were through.

It took us close to two hours, via the much-revered forests of Mawphlang, the elephant falls and post many uplifting moments amidst some of India's most moving and well-endowed scenery. To get past a 1,000 feet upward curve around the southern khasi hills to the Cherrapunjee plateau.

"Sir, you can always come back to Shillong the very same day…," were his last few attempts at making craven travellers out of us. We recalled these words with some misgiving as we drove past Upper Cherrapunjee. The skies had been unduly uncooperative until then and we began to wonder if all the recent weather reports on drought had substance, after all.

We had imagined a land flogged by stubborn rain. What we discovered in its place was parched rudderless terrain, yet to be united with its arch friend, the monsoon.

Whither rain

The Elephant Falls

We headed for Cherra Resorts in Laitkynsew village. The distance from lower Cherrapunjee intersection, past the Mawmluh cement factory was only 15 km. The infrequently patronised road, a little on the side, from the factory seemed to prophesise every grave warning we'd heard.

The mist was to the ground and elevated the driver to the enviable position of saviour as he inched ahead on a road easily narrower than the local giant's little finger. The reassuring presence of resort signage did nothing to stem the flutter in our hearts, much less, the mist-draped twists and turns of the road. Yet this was a vital bit of heaven, boasting a redundant human race with nature the sole repository of blossoming life.

Only one sound penetrated our absorption with nature: the sound of water gushing, slipping, surging, and resonating with the crashing sounds of its own plunge, to a thousand feet below. Exoticism prevails in the shrubbery that swathes the sheer gorge in an infinite mingling of green. From its very depths, we could hear, with faint resonance, the pitiable cries of fledglings rummaging around for the day's little bonuses. Such avarice for worms!

Could there be a more enduring place beyond the gossamer veils of mist floating into our very subconscious? Perhaps, in the warm, comforting embrace of Cherra Resorts where over steaming chais we encountered the daunting courage of a cross-cultural couple, Tamilian Denis Rayen and his khasi wife.

Cherra Resorts at best is the avatar of a bright light at the end of a long dark tunnel. A symbolic one that we had just traversed, right onto firmament dealt with slivers of sunlight escaping through tears in the moody cloud cover. At the edge of the property, we could look across at the Noh Ka Likai falls as they slithered 1800 feet to their chiasmic end in silvery countenance.

The evening sneaked up on us, and the day departed like fugitive quicksilver, for it was difficult to demarcate the times of day in a season clouded over with gloom. Downhill views of Laitkynsew village were fractured by chance lighting, little twinkling stars in the otherwise deathly gray pallor of twilight. Life was good, and our appetites prodigious, satisfactorily doused by the resort's enterprising kitchen team.

Scanning through

Mawsmai cave entrance

Even the rain locally called slaup is described in terms of its ferocity here - hynniew-miat for an unremitting nine-day deluge and khadsaw-miat for 14 days of incessant rain. When we expressed a bold desire to trek in such weather, Denis promptly delivered a guide to the doorstep, hundred yards or so from where moss-cosseted stone steps begin their slippery decline to Ummunoi Siez, the 'living root bridge'.

The forest was a mass of natural vegetation, of mixed evergreen foliage like orchids, epiphytes and ferns overwhelmed by oak and rhododendrons. Under a shower spell that outlasted the 1,000 feet of slithering and sliding, we beheld this wondrous khasi ingenuity. Centuries old, this bridge is made of intertwining roots of the rubber tree; led across the stream to anchor on the opposite bank. In time, many such crossovers had yielded a strong immovable walking plank. Imagine then a double-decker bridge (accounts for another trek!) that counters the Brit premise that khasis are an unthinking lot.

It took more than just 'time' to live down that intense experience of muscle toning. And only after a day spent in idle contemplation of the flooded Bangladeshi plains 10 km away did we muster courage to re-launch our Discovery-of-Cherra programme.

We began with the oldest Presbyterian Church in Saitsohpen village. Whatever else imperialism had not achieved it certainly had spared the Holy Bible and church music for the khasis. Ironically, near-by stands the Round Cemetery, a windswept asylum strictly for the departed souls of fair-skinned mortals.

Monsoon kickbacks

Seven Sisters waterfall; pic: The Wanderers

The northeast conversion campaign has been the most successful in the history of world evangelism. Clearly, the outsiders (read missionaries) must have braved many rain-sated months in their single-minded pursuits. However, it was the terrible earthquake of 1897 it was that granted them a spiritual foothold in the hearts of these erstwhile pagans.

The foreigners dotted the hills with schools, not hotels, lay the foundation stones for lime kilns, built a single cement factory, and laid their fellow nationals to rest beneath cromlechs and tombstones. But, the monsoon was much too ‘hot’ to handle and post Sohra's annexation in 1833, the khasi hills were relieved of their responsibilities by the Brits in favour of Shillong.

In every direction, stone memorials, cromlechs and graveyards are brandished before a visitor, morbid imagery this, but not so for the ancestor-worshipping khasis. We are waylaid by tall monoliths on the way to the krem phyllut cave in Mawsmai, the 25-footer being crowned by a rounded stone shata. The 1003 metre cave is a wonder with a fossil passage and two streams leading off three entrances. For more of cave thrills, there are a plenitude of them in the Jantia hills, giving little cause for discontent.

On the way to the Mawsmai falls, which are 4,000 feet in height and the world's fourth largest, we were hounded by nimbostratus clouds. These clouds are elbowed up the steep chalk and limestone gorges by the southwest monsoon from West Bengal. The Cherra plateau is a mere showground, upon which these clouds perform according to the time of day.

The night is their preferred curtain raiser. Through the dreary nights of our week-long stay did the rain brew storms of unparalleled intensity. The breeze wheezed through the branches of the khasi pines sending the nettles flying through the air and making our hearts aquiver. The inclement weather, though, did seem to facilitate a Swedish couple's search for the missing links in frog evolution. They returned next morning, an 'extinct' species in tow.

We were rather keen on drier pastures and these we were told by Denis lay 12 km away in the Thangkharang park. From its viewing gallery a 180-degree view of the Bangladeshi plains form a backdrop to gorges seared through with waterfalls. Bengali visitors usually settle over their tidy picnic hampers seemingly for extended stays. For us, quite close by the legend of a vanquished giant awaited and we trotted off to ascertain why. Called the Giant's Basket, the unique rock formation is said to be a basket thrown into the forested gorge by an unquenchable giant who was cleverly outwitted by the starving khasis. We benefited from this legend for around it has grown a tranquil, inviting patch of greenery.

Apparently, the bested monster at Dainthlen falls had been quite in the same league. U Thlen had been his name and eating humans his pastime. That the khasis chose to extinguish his light in a place as beautiful as this befuddled us. Water falls off a rock wall into a valley of dense woods. The surrounds lay claim to serendipity, a remarkable opportunity for tourists to de-link with the what's extraneous.

Your hope of discovering a slice of nature isolated from an endearing fable is certainly not to be entertained here in Sohra. Sohra is like that, the route to wilderness. Forget what they told you about 'Monsoon Blues'. In Sohra they simply don't exist.