Three thousand five hundred steps. I am going to start there because it is the number I underestimated the most, and it is the number I keep telling clients about when they ask me about Meghalaya. Three thousand five hundred steps down, into a valley you cannot see the bottom of, on a stone staircase built into the side of a hill, in air so thick with moisture that your shirt is wet before you have done a hundred. And then, having reached the village of Nongriat at the bottom and slept the night and eaten and possibly cried a little, you climb back up.
I went last September. Solo. Five days. Meghalaya had been on my list for years, mostly because of the living root bridges, which I had assumed I could see on a half-day excursion from Shillong like a regular tourist. I was wrong about that.
The flight from Bangalore goes to Guwahati, around three hours direct. From Guwahati it is a three-hour drive up to Shillong, mostly hilly, the last hour slow. Shared Sumos cost six hundred rupees. A private cab is three thousand five hundred. I took the shared Sumo because I was on my own and I had nine days of travel to budget for. The driver played Khasi gospel music the entire way and the woman next to me, returning home from a hospital visit in Guwahati, fell asleep on my shoulder for the last hour. I did not have the heart to move.
I stayed in Shillong for four of the five nights, and one night in the village at the bottom of the steps. This is the right configuration. Do not try to move hotels every day. Shillong is the natural hub. Mid-range stays are between two and a half and five thousand a night. I stayed at a small place near Police Bazar, four thousand, breakfast included, a host who remembered my name on day two.
The first day in Shillong is for adjusting. Walk Police Bazar in the evening, where the streets are narrow and lit and the cafes have live music. Cafe Shillong on a Friday night is a small revelation, two musicians, a small audience, original songs in Khasi and English about rain and leaving home. Eat Jadoh at a local place, which is rice cooked with pork (and, traditionally, pork blood, though most tourist-facing places make a milder version). Drink Khasi tea at the small stalls. Sleep early, because day two starts at six.
Day two is Cherrapunji, which the locals call Sohra. Two hours from Shillong by hired car (around three thousand for the day) or a shared sumo for two hundred rupees if you are willing to wait at the stand. The drive is through pine forests and small villages with churches and football pitches. Meghalaya is over seventy per cent Christian, which I had not properly understood before going. The churches are everywhere, neat and white and full on Sundays.
In Cherrapunji I did Nohkalikai Falls (India's tallest plunge waterfall, the viewpoint is at the edge of a cliff, do not lean), Seven Sisters Falls from the Mawkdok viewpoint, Mawsmai Cave (a short walk-through cave with stalactites, skippable if you are claustrophobic), and the small single-root bridge at Riwai. The Riwai bridge is the preview of what is coming. A fifteen-minute walk in, a small bridge made of two ficus roots intertwined, peaceful, almost no tourists.
Back to Shillong by evening. I ate dinner at a Naga restaurant called Trattoria that served smoked pork and rice in clay pots. Eleven hundred rupees with a beer.
Day three was Mawlynnong and Dawki. Mawlynnong is famously the "cleanest village in Asia." It is genuinely clean. Zero plastic on the streets. Daily community sweeping. The village has a small bamboo viewpoint platform that you can climb. There is one home-run cafe. Eat there. The village is touristy in a sweet way, not in an exploitative way, and the money you spend goes to the local cooperative.
Then drive forty-five minutes to Dawki. The Umngot river is famously clear. The boats are wooden, the boat rides last about thirty minutes, around eight hundred rupees. From the boat you can see the shadow of the boat on the river bed underneath you, which is the photo everyone takes and is honestly worth it. Avoid weekends. The Indian-Bangladesh border is right there, you can see the white sand on the other side.
Day four was the big day. The trek to Nongriat.
From Shillong drive two hours to the village of Tyrna. Park the car. Pay the small entry fee at the village council (a hundred rupees, going to the village for maintenance). And then you start down.
Three thousand five hundred steps. The locals walk it without breaking stride, carrying groceries on their backs and small children on their hips. I am thirty-eight and I work an office job. By step one thousand my thighs were burning. By step two thousand I was breathing through my mouth. By step three thousand I had stopped to drink water four times. The descent took me an hour and forty minutes.
I had booked at Serene Homestay, the most well-known of the village stays. The room was bamboo-walled, with a single mattress on a wooden platform and a window looking out at a banana grove. Shared toilet. Electricity from a small solar setup, on from six to ten in the evening. No Wi-Fi. The owner, a Khasi man called Byron, served dinner at seven on the verandah with three other guests, two Germans and one Bengali. We ate rice and chicken curry and a small bowl of fern stir-fry. Byron played a guitar for twenty minutes after dinner, songs from the 1970s, and then we all went to sleep at nine.
The double-decker root bridge is a ten-minute walk from the homestay. Two intertwined ficus tree roots, trained over generations by one family, forming two walkable platforms stacked on top of each other. The photos make it look like a thing made for Instagram. In person it makes you quiet. You realise that this object in front of you has been grown, by one family, over four generations. The grandfather started it. The grandson is still maintaining it. There is no equivalent to that kind of patience in my urban life.
I sat on the lower deck for forty-five minutes. A small stream ran below, the bridge creaked faintly when someone walked over it, butterflies came and went. Eventually a group of Indian tourists arrived, the silence broke, and I left.
Day five is the climb back. Start by seven in the morning, before the sun gets above the ridge. The climb up took me two hours and forty minutes with breaks. My knees hurt for the next two days. I will say it plainly: if you have any meaningful knee or back issue, do not attempt this trek. The reward is genuine but it is not casual.
Drive back to Shillong, eat a long lunch, sleep early, fly out the next morning.
The total cost, five days, solo, mid-range Shillong stay, shared taxis where possible, one Nongriat night, all food, was around thirty-two thousand from Bangalore. If you want a private car the entire trip (which most clients prefer) add another seven to eight thousand.
Food. Khasi food is meat-heavy. Pork is everywhere. Vegetarians have options at the larger Shillong restaurants but very limited at the village stays. If you are vegetarian, carry snacks. Jadoh, doh khlieh (a pork salad with onions), tungrymbai (fermented soybean dish, strong taste, an acquired one), and the pork momos in Shillong which are genuinely better than most of what I have eaten outside Sikkim, I will say it.
Best time to go is October to early March. The monsoon (June to September) brings record rainfall, which is what Cherrapunji is famous for, but the Nongriat trek is treacherous in heavy rain, and the leeches come out. Trade-off you have to make.
A few practicals. No inner-line permit for Meghalaya for Indian nationals. Jio and Airtel work in Shillong, patchy beyond. Carry eight to ten thousand in cash, ATMs are reliable only in Shillong. Some villages charge a small council fee, between a hundred and two hundred rupees.
I came for the bridges. I came back for the silence. The Khasi villages have a particular quietness, a kind where you stop checking your phone because there is genuinely nothing to check, and that does something to your head over four or five days. I have since arranged Meghalaya for half a dozen clients. Most of them, when they came back, used the same word I would use, which is "rearranged." Something gets gently rearranged in there, after a week without traffic and noise.