Thursday of our week long trip was spent on covering these places.
Mawphlang is a sacred forest near Shillong and is a very beautiful place to visit. The first look at it somehow reminded me of being at a ranch.
Locals treat the forest as very sacred and worship Labasa. One can hear various stories, beliefs and rituals associated with the forest from the guides over there. Our guide walked us through the forest explaining the significance of some of the plant species, describing their unique characteristics and narrating many stories of the place. It is strongly recommended to not pick anything from the forest as it would bring bad luck to the doer. The place felt like being in the lap of the nature, comforted by the warmth of the Mother Nature.
I would greatly recommend visiting this place for acknowledging our blessings and realising our responsibilities towards maintaining it. Fortunately we reached this place by 10:30 or so in the morning and it was very sparsely crowed with tourists. That was one more reason that I liked the place even more.
Basking in the beauty of the place for some more time after our guide left us, we made our next move to Elephant falls. I felt the place is overrated and can be skipped altogether.
We had lunch at Ohri’s Jiva and then moved onto Don Bosco museum. It was like any other museum, seven floors and lots of collections featuring everything about the state and the neighbouring states. I will not treat this as a must visit place except that I liked the skywalk at the top of the building.
Last but one stop for the day was at Ward’s Lake. If we hadn’t had a long tiring day, we might have enjoyed the place better. It is a beautiful place with nice pathways to walk around and some places to sit and do nothing but relax.
The last stop of the day was at Police Bazaar. Oh God, this place was so crowded that we couldn’t fathom what was going on and where each of us was headed. We somehow managed to buy little stuff and had some quick snacks / dinner and left the place. If you aren’t a shopping fan, then you can choose to skip this place entirely.
Just bliss and little more! 