5 people, 5 large backpacks, 5-ish small-ish backpacks and 2 cardboard boxed cycles left Cooke Town one early December morning.

Long lines at 6am. Check.

Dumb airport jokes (“What’s the worst things to say at the airport?” delivered at loud volumes). Check.

Food falling into bag, leading to evacuation of contents. Check.

Blow drying said bag in the loo. Check.

We’re standing in line. A man cuts the line. We tell him there’s a line and he returns volley with, “I’m from Bombay. We do lines. You didn’t appear to be in one. I thought you were Delhi people.”  Touché!

We (that sparkling conversationalist, Arvind Bharathi, to be honest) ended up chatting him up. The man gave advise such as “First 7 years of marriage is Chandramukhi stage. Next 7 are Suryamukhi stage. I’m in the Jwalamukhi stage”.

In the passing, he threw a “you have been working 16 years? You look like you just left college”. Got that one after a few years. All to the good!

30km from home and we seem to be already making friendly conversation with amiable strangers. This has never happened to me at an airport. Possibly because I’m good at looking politely uninterested, or just being coldly unapproachable, depending on where in the spectrum of grumpy and shy introvert I feel at being, at that point. There’s something (that feels like security), when you are 1 of 5 people in a group. You just feel like grinning at the world at large. The milk of human kindness flows freely from the soul.

We landed 30 mins early in Guwahati…. and ended up waiting 2 hrs for the cab. We polished off all the shortbread I’d brought along for the road. Before we even made contact with our first road. Nice! I get a sense of what to expect the rest of the trip. .. especially with vacuum-cleaner-arm-Bharathi on our side.

Guwahati is so cute and quaint! Our plan was to drop off the two cycles at Anita Bora’s parents house (Anita is a triathlete, foodie & generally fun person I’ve known for as long as I’ve known Reena, those two are thick as thieves, though!) for the duration of the Meghalaya trip. Athreya, Madiha,  and I were returning to Beantown, but Reena and Arvind are planning to cycle on to Arunachal with 2 others. Our charming driver to Boras’ house gave us the quick and dirty on history and culture of Assam. It’s funny how we haven’t even heard of the names of the revolutionaries who have big statues dedicated to them in the middle of the city – case in point, the statue of Lachit Borphukan on the Brahmaputra river. I felt like such a mainlander, tramping about, completely unaware of the lores of the east. This, 30 minutes in this city. I wonder how much I’m going to learn that I don’t know at all! And which buttons should I keep close – shock? Awe? Embarrassment? Ignorance? Maybe just interest? 🙂

After offloading the bikes and munching on some amazing goodies that Anita’s mum had specially made for us, we hit the road. 5 hours on the undulating winding roads, a few blindingly beautiful sights, later, we sighted Cherrapunjee and our resort, Sa-I-Mika.

Our driver du jour was absolutely a star. We stopped for lunch at not an Assamese place as we hoped for but a highway-ish dhaba. We grumbled till the food hit the table. It was hard to say anything that wasn’t starry eyed appreciation. The lemon juice was such a revelation! So completely fresh, it brought on lots of happy emotions.

Thanks to some very competent competent driving we were able to enjoy our first sight of the starry skies.
At the resort, we had asked for the dorm on the first day. Someone lit a fire in the room and we drank hot soup and lovely food. First taste of Khasi food for the meat eaters happened. I ate daal. At 12 degrees, this isn’t epic cold but it still takes some getting used to.

We chilled at the restaurant for a bit. Reena made some friends, as usual 🙂 The ambient metal/ rock music is a nice welcome from what has now become standard Bangalore fare (I am opinionated, but who’d have thunk muzak or EDM would be de rigeur all over Beantown!!)

Now, yanking thermals out and settling in for a bit of peace and quiet tonight before starting some activity and adventures tomorrow.