Assam & Meghalaya: Kaziranga to Cherrapunji

Met at Guwahati airport and driven into the city, the largest in the Northeast, which runs for miles along the south bank of the Brahmaputra; Dispur, the capital of Assam, is one of its suburbs. Check in at your hotel and rest after the flight.

Towards evening, a boat out on the river. Even in the dry months the Brahmaputra is wide here, with sandbanks, ferries and fishermen’s country boats working the current, and in midstream the small island of Umananda, with its temple to Shiva. The sun sets downstream, to the west, and the boats and the long Saraighat bridge turn to silhouettes against it.

The day begins with the elephant-back safari that the forest department runs in the park, at five, six or seven in the morning; the department allots the slot. The elephants and their mahouts go out into the grassland of the central range, among the one-horned rhinoceros, wild buffalo and swamp deer. Back to the resort for breakfast.

Late in the morning, the Kaziranga Orchid Park — the National Orchid and Biodiversity Park at Durgapur, near Kohora — set up by local people to keep the wild orchids of the Northeast: hundreds of kinds, with beds of bamboo, cane and the region’s rice, fruit and vegetables.

In the afternoon, a jeep safari of about two and a half hours in the central range of Kaziranga National Park, through elephant grass, wetland and patches of forest. Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, holds about two-thirds of the world’s one-horned rhinoceroses, and you are likely to see many, with wild elephants, buffalo and hog deer; tigers live here too, though they are seldom seen. The evening is free, for a walk, or for Assam tea from the estates around the park.

The morning just outside Shillong. Elephant Falls is Ka Kshaid Lai Pateng Khohsiew in Khasi, the three-step falls, for the three drops it makes through the forest; the British named it for a rock like an elephant at its foot, which the great earthquake of 1897 destroyed. Then Shillong Peak, the highest point in Meghalaya, with the town spread out below — it lies inside an Air Force station, and entry is at the Air Force’s discretion (see Before you book).

Then south across the plateau to Cherrapunji — Sohra, as it is also called — one of the wettest places on earth. At Nohkalikai Falls a single stream leaps off the plateau edge into a green pool far below; the name means ‘the leap of Ka Likai’, after a Khasi story your guide will tell you. Then Mawsmai Cave, lit inside, where the limestone passages narrow so that in places you turn sideways to pass.

Two more falls on the plateau: Dainthlen, named for the thlen, the great serpent of a Khasi legend, said to have been killed here; and Wei Sawdong, which drops in three tiers into blue pools at the foot of a steep path. Last, the Eco Park on the rim of the gorges, from which on a clear day you look down to the plains of Bangladesh. The night in Cherrapunji.

Into the Jaintia Hills, the country of the Pnar people, on the road that climbs from Dawki towards Jowai. Near Amlarem a flight of stone steps leads down through the forest to Krang Suri, where the water pours off a sandstone ledge into a pool of clear, deep blue. On the same road, a walk of about half an hour through open country brings you to Phe Phe Falls, which comes down in two tiers to a pool of its own.

Then through Jowai to Nartiang, the summer capital of the Jaintia kings, and the largest gathering of monoliths in Meghalaya: upright stones, moo shynrang, and flat table stones, moo kynthai, raised between about 1500 and 1835 for the dead, for victories and for the great of the kingdom. The tallest was set up by U Mar Phalyngki, a lieutenant of the king, after a victory in battle. Nearby, on a hillock, is the kings’ Durga temple, a plain building of stone and wood, where the goddess is represented by a plantain stem hung with marigolds. Then back over the hills to Shillong.