Morning dawned with dew and pearly-sunshine at Sa-I-Mika Park.

Sa-I-Mika Park? What’s with the name? It’s not a Shillong thing, in case you were wondering. In the grand tradition of naming your business after your children… Liji Electricals (Lissy and Jijo, see?), PooMa (pooja and Manjushri, maybe) Mining etc. (not real companies, so don’t Google them) – anywhere in the country, the resort was named after the 3 kids of the couple who built the business up. I felt bad for the kid from whose name, the “I” came.  Rather a puny contribution, what? The resort though. What a joy, it was!!!

The day started quietly with some soaking in of the sun. A hearty breakfast in a sunny part of the resort, and some banter later, we set out to the Cherrapunji city market. A weekly affair, this was an occurrence recommended by one of Reena’s many contacts in the region.
The market was a pleasure. From 8am-10pm, all conceivable food was there. A quintessential small city market and charming with it. We encountered way too many genuine smiles (to use Arvind’s terminology, “disarming smile”)

We were loving the innate sweetness of the locals! We bought a bunch of food from these small stalls. There were all these fruits and veggies we had to ask the name of. There were tobacco leaves 🙂 We ate these amazing aloo chops too.

There was a lovely eatery in the middle of the market. A table laden with local delicacies, benches around it, 2 people serving. We sat down, made friends with 14 year old Stephanie (sister is in nursing college in Bangalore, she wants to be a doctor). Mum is a quiet goddess of a cook. We ate all these cool things by the bowlful. The vegetarian me got rice, radish veggie, bamboo veggie, bitter gourd and potato veggie, dal, some chutneys… yum!!! Everything was home cooked, and made simply, but with attention to the flavours of the ingredients.

The others ate 2 kinds of pork, some fish type things, beef, chicken, what not.

Satisfied and smiling, we walked back with a stop by at what was to become a frequent visiting spot in the future…

We did touristy things.

And took the scenic route back.

By which, I mean that we started off-roading, confident that “We just have to follow that trail”.  When that trailed off, we had to stomp around (hoping there weren’t any snakes nearby). At one point, some people were leaping off lithely from one rocky outcrop to the other, some others were trudging on quite gamely, and some of us (read: me) were freaking out inside the head while whistling a showtune (okay, i can’t whistle) casually. Adventure, thy name isn’t Pillai!

We got to the resort, starving!!! The best thing about clean non-city-air is the fact that you feel your system is cleaner. And you are often hungry!

And then. Our 2 formidable generals, Gen. Chengappa and Gen. Ali scored us a pretty, cosy cottage. How, you ask? They marched off to talk to the man in charge and to ask him if he had different quarters. They ran into a lady who turned out to be the owner of the resort. And she did something that small business owners everywhere will nod at: she sussed us in a few seconds, decided we were not rude people or troublemakers, or out to trick her out of fair fare… and decided to give us that charming little cottage at significantly lower than rack rate.

Faster than you could say khublei (Khasi for hi, bye and thanks, we were told) The evening was spent talking, singing, dancing, eating, laughing.

By the fire. Mmmm.

Dialog of the day: while walking through the underbrush, we see two local dogs do that jumping fox move, where, using their heads, they try to make a dent in the ground.

Arvind: “Did you check out the dog’s fox move now?”

Madiha: “Awww. Come here babies! What lauly kutties!!”

Arvind: “Ai! They’re hunters now, not your kutties!”

South Indian of the day award: Reena. For headbawth.