Trip to Shillong

Myself with my friend Nagaraj planned for North East trip and we decided on Shillong in Meghalaya state.

Travel date : 25th December'2014 to 02nd January 2015

We started from Bangalore Airport in SpiceJet. If you would like to have food in Bangalore Airport the best place is the Airport canteen which is just outside the Departure terminal, here you will get quality food at reasonable price. Inside departure terminal all foods are very costly. There won’t be any signage for canteen, please ask some people. And one note, if you enter the departure terminal you cannot get out for any reason.

We reached Guwahati airport around 3:15pm though the actual time to land is 2:45pm. Guwahati airport is very small and it is far from the City (around 25 km). Inside the airport you can find counter for Arunachal Pradesh state tourism, cab booking, hotels etc.

Once you are coming out of the airport, cab drivers will surround you for taxi. Be careful, they may charge high price. We took a private a/c bus which was there just few meters away from airport and goes to Guwahati city. They charged Rs130/- it’s reasonable for 25 km travel in A/c bus. On the way to city we enjoyed the beautiful scene of Bramaputhra river which is very big.

Guwahati to Shillong is just 100km distance but the travel time differs based on the mode of transport. Below are the travel options

1.       Govt Bus – which will take around 5 to 6hrs
2.       Sharing taxi – travel time is 3 to 3.5 hrs but need to wait till sufficient people boards the vehicle. They charge Rs300/- per person from Guwahati city, Rs500/- per person from Guwahati airport
3.             Private taxi – Upto Rs2000/-, you can stop in between and take photos

We boarded sharing taxi (Swift Dezire) and thought we can enjoy the scenic beauty of hill drive but sun sets very fast here, even at 4:30 pm city becomes dark and streets light will be switched on. So it was a little disappointing for us.

It won’t happen always but anticipate breakdown of vehicle. We would have travelled 1 hour uphill and on the way we saw a taxi vehicle brokedown because of gear box problem. We are already 4 in our cab and we invited 3 more guys from that vehicle and we 7 are travelling in swift dezire !!! (luckily 2 people got down after 15 mins as they reached their place) One of the senior most person (guess 60+) of GSI joined us in the cab and we were talking to him about north east and whole of India. It was a wonderful knowledge gaining session in a cab from such an elderly person. We were talking and talking till we reach our point. We greeted new year wishes and shook of hands with him.

On your way to Shillong you will cross Barapani dam and near to it only Shillong airport is situated. From Barapani it will hardly take 30 mins to reach Shillong.

Panoramic view of Shillong Police Bazaar