A. Sanyal
It was a moist cool hilly afternoon of June in Shillong, when we planned
our trip to the village town of Mawsynram. Mawsynram was one place I
always wanted to go. More so, during the monsoon months. Just to
experience the heavy rains in the hills. And get soaked in the
experience of a lifetime.
As we were preparing to arrange who would go in which car, my young son
asked me inquisitively, “Ma, what is there in Mawsyaram! What are you
going to see there?”.
“Rains, my dear”, I replied smilingly, “Just rains’.
Young Arjun, 12 year old boy of mine, couldn’t believe what he heard.
Visiting a place to just see ‘rains’ ?…Has his mother gone bonkers? He
decided to remain in Shillong with his friends and spend his afternoon
in playing friendly football match with his friends.
Two cars- Maruti 800, were arranged for the trip. Eight of us huddled in
and began the journey just when it had started drizzling heavily in
Shillong. By the time we had left Shillong, the down pour became quite
heavy. We could see low lying clouds nestled cosily on the hill tops and
in the crevices between the hills. The meandering road was also engulfed
in low clouds and I had a feeling of sailing through cloud laden roads
as we navigated through lush green Khasi hills.
Mawsynram, a small village town in the Khasi hills, has recently earned
the title of the world’s wettest spot with an average annual rainfall of
467 inches. Just 10 miles away from Mawsynram, is Cherrapunjee with an
average annual rainfall of 450 inches per year, the third rainiest place
in the world. The second rainiest place in the world is Mt. Waialeale on
the island of Kauai in Hawaii with an yearly average rainfall of 460
inches. But the rainfall on Mt. Waialeale is spread evenly over 12
months, while Mawsynram and Cherrapunjee get their rains in the six
months of monsoon from April to September. Also, nobody lives on Mt.
Waialeale where as more than 70,000 people call Cherrapunjee and
Mawsynram their home., According to the topography of the state of
Meghalaya which is close to Indo-Bangladesh border, the Mawsynram
Cherrapunjee region receives the highest rainfall because it is directly
in the course of south west monsoon in the Indian subcontinent. As we
entered the hills near Mawsynram, the downpour was very heavy. God had
really listened to my prayers. The hill sides were transformed into
natural cataracts and waterfalls. The roof of our taxi started leaking
and droplets were falling on our heads. Rains, rains everywhere, just
exactly what we wanted.
Just before we entered Mawsynram, there was a natural falls very close
to the road where the water fell with the wild ferocity of Niagra falls.
We couldn’t resist the temptation of coming out from the shelters of our
taxis and getting drenched in the rains and observing the waterfalls from
close quarters. It was the most exhilarating experience for us to stand
so close to the magnificent natural waterfalls with rains washing us
from all directions and to the very soul.
I opened my shoes as they had badly got drenched and resembled Noah’s
ark. All of us had become very wet and thought what good it would do to
us if we had the luxury of hot cup of tea and hot cheese balls or
samosas.
We reached the cave temple of Lord Shiva in Mawsynram soon after.
Mawsynram appeared to me as a small sleepy rain clad village town
inhabiting not more than 25,000 people.
We waded through rain washed stone stairs to enter the gaint staglagmite
cave shel
tering the natural “Shivalinga”. The natural giant “Shivalinga”
inside the cave is really unique with water trickling down from the roof
of the cave naturally as obeisance on the “Shivalinga”. There is another
small natural staglamite formation close the gaint “Shivalinga” which is
worshipped by the locals as Goddess Parvati. The story goes that two
European Atheists tried to destroy the natural staglagmite shrine and
very soon succumbed to their end after throwing up bile and blood.
On our way back to Shillong, we stopped by at Maphlong, to see the water
reservoir there, which supplied water to the residents of Shillong. Our
vehicles didn’t have the requisite gate pass to enter the security zone
of the water reservoir, so we decided to climb down the hills using the
man made stairs. I was in my socks only. I had left my wet shoes in the
car. We climbed down almost a 1000 ft down to reach the water treatment
plant in the Maphglong dam at about 5:30 in the evening.
The clouds were huddled together in all places between the hills and
were so low as if they had come to exchange their dreams with us. Five
thirty in the evening meant it would be dark in another one hour or so.
And we hadn’t the stamina to climb up the hills, the steep 1000 ft, in
one hour. We were drenched and tired. So, we chose to walk the
meandering 5 kms instead, to reach the security gate where our vehicles
were parked. We divided us into two groups. The brave and not so brave.
The brave group was captained by the ex-Army captain of our team Amodda, who we were sure could make it up the hills in flat 20 mins by
the way of the steep stairs through the hills. The not so brave team was
led by me and had two more ladies and a young man of 24 and we chose to
walk the meandering road instead of climbing the stairs.
Actually the plan was to walk through the hilly meandering roads before
darkness had set in and have Amodda get one of the vehicles to rescue us
from the forlorn walk.
It was some trek all of us would remember all our life through. The air
around was moist and cool. I was walking in my socks only. The rest in
wet shoes and slippers. All of us were drenched completely. We were
almost cantering and panting heavily as we did so. The clouds also
walked with us through the crevices of the hills and close to the deep
gorges and kept us company. Not a soul stirred on the forlorn road and
as the light of the day started growing dim with passing time, I
wondered what would happen if it started raining again or a lone panther
came in front of us from the jungle in the hills. These hills were told
to have such four legged wonders as inhabitants. We didn’t have a stick
also to protect us and our mobiles were not working. It took us fifty
minutes to cover 3.5 kms. By that time Amodda arrived to rescue us in a
vehicle after sweet talking the Khasi guard into allowing him to pass
his vehicle through the gate.
We reached Shillong around 8 PM and helped ourselves to hot samosas and
sweet jalebis at “Delhi Mishtan Bhandar’ in Police Bazar, before going
home finally.
