Meghalaya

Meghalaya is defined by water. Sohra and Mawsynram, half an hour apart, record among the heaviest rainfall of any inhabited place on earth, and everything here follows from it: the waterfalls, the limestone caves, and the root bridges the Khasi grow by training fig roots across rivers over decades. A workable route is short. Shillong for two nights, then Sohra, then the Umngot river at Dawki or Shnongpdeng, and back. The stop that breaks it is the Garo Hills in the west, because Tura is a full day's drive away on roads that do not repay it. Treat west Meghalaya as a separate trip. Nongriat is what most people come for and what most underestimate. The double-decker root bridge sits at the bottom of roughly three thousand stone steps down from Tyrna, and you climb every one of them again on the way out. Sleep down there rather than turning it into a day trip. Mawmluh Cave outside Sohra is where geologists took the reference sample that named the Meghalayan Age, the span of time we are currently in. Almost nobody goes. October to April is the dry half of the year. From June the rain is the whole story.