Wandering around Shillong

My hotel room included breakfast starting at 0730.  I had semolina, potato curry, hard-boiled eggs and puri.  That all went very well mixed together even though I don’t think it was meant to be.  A banana made the breakfast complete.

I explored the area around Lake Ward which was the centre of the colonial town.  There’s not much evidence of it left except for parts of some old homes, some of which have been altered.  I made my way to the Pinewood Hotel which represented one of the few well-preserved examples, along with the All Saint’s cathedral which I found later on during my explorations.

As the skies were rather grey, I decided not to walk the 40 minute distance to the Don Bosco Museum of Indigenous Cultures.  Even in a taxi, it seemed like a long way out of town.  This museum by the mission was a very good exhibition of the cultures, crafts, life-skills, etc of the people in India’s north-east.

The exhibition started a few levels below the entrance and spiralled upwards to the rooftop.  Funnily, there were warnings everywhere discouraging visitors from eating at the attached food gallery.  There had been ill-treatment of guests and the operator is now undergoing legal proceedings.

I took the bus back to Police Bazaar, the town centre, and look for the bus station so I could enquire about services to Cherrapujee, my next destination.  The local bus station didn’t have any services and sent me across the road to the Meghalaya Tourist Office which only operated a full-day tour at INR350.  They also had a wide range of other tours in the region and if I had known that

I would have stayed an extra day here to do something else.

For independent bus-only arrangements, they sent me to Bara Bazaar which they said was 10 minutes away by foot.  After many enquiries and perhaps 25 minutes of walking I made it to the Bara Bazaar.

It was a very chaotic mish-mash of very run down buildings, buses, taxis, clothing, veges, slaughtered chicken all-in-one.  The buses were very run-down but I’ve been in worse.  I was more concerned that they were parked-up and none appeared to be going anywhere.  I thought I’d end up waiting forever if I came here tomorrow morning.  And I’d have to take a taxi from the hotel to here.  That plus the cost of the bus (which I later found was only INR40) wouldn’t be much of a savings compared to the INR350 tour, which I would abandon at the end in order to continue staying in Cherrapujee.

I returned to the town centre, had a coffee and chocolate tart before proceeding to book the tour.  I had dinner at the hotel again before retiring early.