Till Recently Crowned the wettest place in India, Cherrapunjee has retained its Pristine Beauty, its unusual facets and the perpetual clouds with the occasional rainbow.
The wettest place on earth till recently, Cherrapunjee has gracefully passed the crown to the neighbouring Mawsynram, just 10 kms away. Yet, it has retained its pristine beauty, its unusual facets and the perpetual clouds and the perpetual mists, with the occasional, unexpected guest appearances of the rainbows. Famous for the 3 Ps-precipitation, its share of poets and few stories of passion, this place is a haven for people who love solitude, art of all hues and walks, for this sleepy sanctuary offers beautiful walks that curve along the vales and hills offering splendid vistas, wild flowers, pine flavoured air and the music of sparkling streams.

Let me remind you, that at Cherrapunjee (or Sohra as they call the administrative subdivision) rains are not the drudgery of metros like Mumbai or Kolkata but indeed romantic enough to take out the umbrellas and walk the walk or even throw the umbrella for a while and do the zing. And if you are not too spirited then, have a hot cuppa listening to the pitter-patter on the tin roofs of the circuit house or the tourism guesthouse, reading a book or holding hands with the beloved or just letting the mind drift to nowhere.

And since I love to think that I don't just love rains but also have some poetic passions (of course that shows only on some rare moments when nature infects me with some eloquence), I took this trip to Cherrapunjee. (Or if you want me to be more truthful, I actually often take trips to Cherrapunjee whenever I am in Guwahati and have at least 2-3 days in hand. The capital of Meghalaya, Shillong is just two and a half hours drive from Guwahati, the gateway to the North East.

And no doubt Shillong in itself is a beautiful, picture-postcard town with much to see and savour, but now though that can wait. Like life, everything beautiful associated with it comes in small measures, step by step and slowly, so that we don't really miss it. And hence we can keep Shillong for the next time. The distance of 58 km from Shillong to Cherrapunjee is a wonder in itself.

As you drive through the serpentine road, the Khasi hills unfolds, rolls in layers to allow you to behold an amazingly beautiful panorama which makes one stop often, to capture the beauty in the mind as well as the camera. But it is not just the road which is in a playful mood of twists and turns, you have more companions! At every twist, every turn, every nook, every corner, So let's begin with the beginning. Sohra got its name from Soh and Ra, the couple who were so much in love with themselves and so much out of love with their folks that they decided to rather face the torrential rains that continue for months in these uninhabited mountains of the ancient times and settle here. This became their personal mountain, their personal home.

And I guess, the trend continued even when time passed and they flourished and filled the land with their children. So the villages with just a few houses are perched on their own personal hillock, village women wash their clothes in their personal stream, the dead are buried in a personal graveyard, oranges are grown in personal orchards, orange flavoured honey is extracted from personal bee-hives and the sacred forests from where nothing should be picked up, nothing plucked or disturbed (yes, roots of conservation in tribal traditions!!) is also personal.