VISIT TO THE CLEANEST VILLAGE, CLEAREST RIVER AND LIVING ROOT BRIDGES - MEGHALAYA JOURNEY

This was our last day in Shillong, after breakfast we started our day with a visit to Ward’s Lake, locally known as Pollock Lake or Nan Polok an artificial lake in the centre of the city

Though the lake was built by Colonel Hopkins in 1894, it is believed that the area around the lake was developed by a Khasi prisoner to relieve the monotony of his daily routine.

It is a horse-shoe-shaped lake with a white bridge crossing it, it is close to Raj Bhavan and is surrounded by a beautiful garden laid with cobble-stone footpaths and a fountain. 

It is just a 10-minute walk from the Police Bazaar and is ideal for morning walks, as we walked around we were greeted by the multi colored flower beds, well-groomed trees and boating facility  

We then sped on our way to Umsyiem village, on the way we saw some ladies cozily chatting and washing their clothes near a brook, I said it is very common in our state too and is a form of popular social media

We stopped at a small village ,I was entranced by their life styles and the tin roofs which are used to withstand heavy rains

We found Memorial stones or monoliths in a village, there were large vertical stones or Menhirs known as male stones and few horizontal stones or Dolmens known as female stones which are put in honor of the deceased, they serve as focal points for rituals and ceremonies

We then drove to Dawki, a sleepy town in West Jaintia hills, the last Indian post on road connecting to Sylhet in Bangaladesh of the Jaintia community who are mostly fishermen.

The view from the top of the hill was awesome, we could get tantalizing views of the Umngot river, it is the venue of the annual boat race held during March- April in the Umsyiem village.

The car stopped and we got down the hill through the roughly cut uneven steps, a word of caution to the readers, most of the places in Meghalaya need a lot of climbing up and down the hills and unless we used to long hours of walking and trekking and are fit and agile ,our poor knees start protesting after a while with this unaccustomed exercise.

There were many country boats eagerly waiting for customers , we got into one and started our journey in the beautiful river ,the water though deep was so crystal clear that the other boats passing by looked as if they were stalled on the river ,the stones in the water seemed to beckon us wickedly daring us to join them ,

Hills around us watched solemnly and there were small water falls gushing down the hills ,apparently these boat rides can be appreciated only between months of October to March as the level of water increases crazily from April due to the pre monsoon rains making boat riding impossible

Being a cancerian I do seem to have an affinity for water as my long suffering hubby says I get very excited whenever I see any water body

We passed below the hanging metal bridge built by the British way back in 1932 connecting Assam and East Bengal and noticed zip lining adventure activity a little further down

There were tents set up along the riverside where one can spend the night and enjoy the nature at its best but as usual an inadvertent thought struck me what if wild animals also decide to share our dinner and I brushed it aside as anyway we had no intention of staying there.

In a short while we could see the source of the river Umngot which was energetically gushing through stones and seemed to be in an indecent haste to flow towards the plains.

There were the usual bamboo bridges and a solitary fisherman fishing in the water, I tried to peep into a boat to see the catch and could find quite a lot of them but I was pulled back by my hubby who was scared that I may fall off the boat, ha ha !

Next we went to the point where the river diverged partly towards Bangladesh and saw a narrow rocky strip separating the 2 countries, intermingling of Indians and Bangladeshis happens along the river, 

We could see a sea of people along the banks of Bangladesh side of the river, people were picnicking and frolicking, our boats went so near that we could see the people very clearly.

As I was busy chatting with the boatman, I came to know that Meghalaya follows a matrilineal system where the youngest daughter gets all the property and has to take care of her parents

The boat ride was amazing and I felt as if I had been to another country without any visa

After climbing the inevitable excruciating steps we were back in our cab and reached the border force, the electric wire mesh between our country and Bangladesh was indeed terrifying

We stopped at a restaurant for tea and snacks, I just entered it when I heard  someone calling out Ramani mam! To my joy I saw a doctor couple who were my UG students from a medical college I had previously worked, the couple were both super specialists in a big hospital ,they were introducing me to their sweet little children , for a strict teacher like me , meeting my students many years after I have taught them and being recognized is a big reward indeed

We then went to Mawlynnong a tiny village where after undergoing a serious bout of cholera, the villagers decided to take cleanliness seriously, after few days the world noticed and the village promptly shot to fame in 2003 when it was declared as the cleanest village in Asia, having 90% literacy rate it soon became a model for other villages and began to draw in tourists as media coverage grew.

The Prime Minister of India has repeatedly referred to Mawlynnong contribution in cleanliness in Swatch Bharath

Presently the village has around 1000 residents and sees hundreds of visitors every week, we need to pay an entrance fee of Rs.100 each to enter and there is also a parking fee

We went around the village and found it very clean and well maintained, I felt it was like a well decorated house waiting for its guests, it follows useful initiatives like meticulous waste disposal, community cleaning, banning of plastics and smoking

There was a bamboo watch tower which I promptly climbed, a little apprehensive that it may collapse but luckily it didn’t, from the top I could see Bangladesh very clearly

We saw areca nuts being dried in the courtyards of many houses ,most of them were maintaining beautiful gardens

As we were famished by then we had a small vegetarian thali at a restaurant where food was served hot

We were now about to see the living root bridge  in village Riwai ,next to the Mawlynnong, the practice of creating living root bridges is found all over Meghalaya where functional, living architecture is created by slowly training the aerial roots of the rubber tree ( Ficus elastic) from one side of the river to the other to form a natural bridge, they are strengthened by mud and stones to  hold the weight of a few humans at a time

Living root bridges are indeed masterful solutions to the seasonal problem of crossing fast-flowing torrents during the rainy monsoon.  Large numbers of these bridges still exist but are slowly being replaced with more standard steel bridges.

The Cherrapunjee double decker bridge is very famous but it needs one full day and we have to undertake an arduous trek which we were not up to, so we chose to see the living root bridge at Riwai , even this was quite tedious as the steps were very roughly hewn and slippery and I was literally hanging onto my side rail for my dear life

I was very impressed by the intricate design and formation of the living root bridge, though I thought it may not bear much weight it stood tall and strong even with 10 to 12 people standing on it, a river ran under it sedately.

After a long tiring day we returned to Shillong for a night rest