Meghalaya in the monsoon: what the season costs you
Meghalaya does not let you have all of it on one trip, and almost nothing written about the place admits that.
The waterfalls only roar in the monsoon. The Umngot at Dawki is only glass-clear outside it. The root bridges at Nongriat are three and a half thousand steps down a hillside, which is a different proposition in the rain than in the photographs. Those three facts do not fit inside a single visit, and choosing between them is the actual planning problem.
I went in late June, at the height of it. So I got the water.
The viewpoint I rate above every other
Four kilometres from Mawsynram, at Mawkaphan, there is a place called Khreng Khreng. It is the best viewpoint I have stood at anywhere — not the best in Meghalaya, not the best in the North-East. Anywhere.
There was nobody else there. That is most of what I want to say about it, and it is also the argument for the whole state: some of the best places on earth are the least visited, and Meghalaya has more of them per kilometre of road than anywhere else I have driven in India.
Go early, and take the weather seriously. There is no railing.
Sohra and Mawsynram are not the same place
They get written up interchangeably because they are close and they are both famous for rain. Give them separate days.
Mawsynram is the wettest inhabited place on earth and behaves like it — the cloud does not sit above you so much as move through the village. Sohra is the one with the name recognition and the tour buses, and it is worth the time, but it is the busier and the tamer of the two.
What the monsoon costs you
The rain that makes the falls worth seeing takes other things off the table, and it is better to know that before you build the itinerary than to find out at the trailhead.
Nongriat's root bridges are not a wet-season trek. Dawki in the rains is brown water and a puzzled look at everyone else's photographs of a river you cannot see the bottom of.
If those two are what you came for, come in the dry months instead and accept that the waterfalls will be a trickle down a cliff. There is no month that gives you both.
My read
Four axes, five points each — how the trip felt to me, not a measurement of the place.
- adventure
- 4/5
- risk
- 4/5
- solitude
- 4/5
- effort
- 3/5
The wettest place on earth, in the season that earns it the name.
Khreng Khreng is unmanned — no path, no railing, and monsoon landslides on the roads in.
Going in monsoon is going in the off-season by choice.
Wet rock, long stairs, and days that end soaked whatever you wear.
Worth doing
- Drive out to Khreng Khreng, four kilometres from Mawsynram at Mawkaphan. It is the best viewpoint I have stood at anywhere, and I had it to myself.
- Come in the monsoon if you came for the waterfalls. June is when they actually roar; the rest of the year they are a trickle down a cliff.
- Give Sohra and Mawsynram separate days. They get written up interchangeably and they are not the same place.
- Take the Mairang–Nongstoin road out to the Markham Valley if you have a spare day — West Khasi meadow country, and nobody in it.
Worth skipping
- Nongriat’s root bridges in the wet season. Three and a half thousand steps down a hillside is a different proposition in the rain than in the photographs.
- Dawki and the Umngot in the monsoon. The river is glass-clear only in the dry months; in June it is brown, and you will wonder what everyone photographed.
- Planning a trip that gets both the roaring falls and the clear river. There is no month that gives you both, and pretending otherwise is how people leave disappointed.