Northeast is a storehouse of some exotic locations and we are always in a constant search of some newness and freshness. We have visited Shillong many times and every time I visit it refreshes my soul to the core and about Cherrapunji nevertheless I have visited maybe a zillion times I still know it has some more surprises in store many times. The last week was a very hectic one for both of us, so we just packed our bags, we needed a break very badly. We just had the weekend in our hands so Shillong was the only place in our itinerary. But we were lucky enough that we could visit a beautiful place called Laitlum with the help of our local taxi driver.  This time we didn’t take our car because it was not a planned visit, so we took the local share taxi from Khanapara, at around 8 am on.

We reached the Police Bazar at 11 am. We had a room booked in The Zara Residency. We had our lunch at The Jiva Sizzlers. After that, I did quite a lot of shopping from the famous Police Bazar market, but make sure you bargain a lot. After that, we still had quite a lot of time in our hand. We hired a taxi at Rs500 for 2-3hours. We spent some quality time in Ward’s Lake which is one of our favourites hang out spot, then we visited The Cathedral of Mary Help of Christians, the Lady Hydari Park which is also quite peaceful. As I said earlier we have already visited these places a zillion times, we asked our driver, who was quite friendly, to take us to some new places which we haven’t visited earlier.

Laitlum – in our itinerary

We wanted to visit the Sacred Forest in Mawphlang, but he advised us to visit the place in November or December as that will be the best time to visit. He suggested us to visit Laitlum near Smit which falls in the East Khasi Hills. He told us it is the place where the shooting of upcoming movie Rock On 2 took place. It raised our eyebrows and without much thinking, we asked the driver to take us to Laitlum the next day i.e. Sunday. Next morning we woke up early, the driver, his name was Raghu came to pick us up at around 7.30am, we reached the spot at 8.30am. The place is around 30km from Police Bazar. The journey itself was thrilling, the distant hills looked neat with vegetable plantation all over them, and the breathtaking landscape drifted us apart to land that came only in our wildest imagination.

It was so dreamy, the pastures, the villages we passed on our way, the hills, the animals grazing, small kids playing, neatly dressed children, man, woman on their way to the Church for Sunday mass, how we missed we could stay there forever. The road was very confusing, there were no signboards, but thanks to our driver he knew the place quite well. They charged Rs10 per head for entering the spot. There was zero visibility due to heavy fog, it was quite chilly there. The place is not much known among tourist, there are no boundaries on the edges so please be careful, also the place is very solitary I suggest one should go in a group, the village is located down in the valley, there are around 400 steps, one can also go for trekking but we skipped as we had to go back the same day.

The beauty cannot be narrated in words. It is also called as Laitlum Canyons, and true to words canyons means where hills come to an end. It covered with clouds and once the sun shone among the clouds the view we got of the hills it made us awestruck, we were speechless, in true sense Meghalaya is called ‘the abode of clouds’. The clouds come and pass by and you can surrender yourself to the serenity of nature.

We sat there for hours, enjoying the fresh breeze. On a clear day, you can see the lush green valley surrounded by hills on all sides, that day we were lucky to get to spectacular view only when the clouds passed and the sun shone from within the clouds. We started back from there at around 11 am and reached police bazaar, had lunch and then took a taxi to Guwahati. There are many reasons why Meghalaya is one of the favourite places for tourist. Northeast has so much to offer in terms of tourism so I feel it is my duty to let people throughout the world know about this wonderful place where you can feel the nature and be one with it. We paid the driver Rs1200 for the entire tour. He charged a little more but we didn’t bargain since we were thankful he took us there. You can also visit in private car but I suggest you hire a cab or taxi from police bazaar as there are no particular directions mentioned on the way and a local driver can guide you there well.

Thanks for reading my blog and for any kind of query please feel free to email me or post a comment here.
Posted By- Ishani Nath

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