Carved out of Assam in 1972, hilly Meghalaya (The Abode of Clouds) is a cool, pine-fresh contrast to the sweaty Assam plains. Set on dramatic horseshoes of rocky cliff above the Bengal plains, Cherrapunjee and Mawsynram are statistically the wettest places on earth. Most of this precipitation falls April to September (and mostly at night), creating some very impressive waterfalls and carving out some of Asia’s longest caves.
Category: Northeast States
Bodoland’s Unesco-listed Manas National Park (www.manas100.com; Oct-Mar) has two ‘ranges’. National park fees are as for Kaziranga.
The great grey Brahmaputra River’s ever-shifting puzzle of sandbanks includes Majuli, the world’s largest river island. Amid the gently contemplative landscapes of rice fields, water meadows and fish traps here, attractions include meeting the local Mising people and learning about neo-Vaishnavite philosophy at one of Majuli’s 22 ancient satras .
Nagaland’s agreeable capital is painted across a series of forested ridges and hilltops like spangled topping on a vast pistachio sundae.
Assam’s must-do attraction is a rhinoceros-spotting safari in the expansive flat grasslands of Kaziranga National Park (1 Nov-30 Apr, elephant rides 5.30am & 6.30am, jeep access 7.30-10.30am & 2.30-5pm). Kaziranga’s population of around 1800 Indian one-horned rhinos (up from just 200 in 1904) represents over two-thirds of the world’s total. There are several ‘ranges’, but the central and most accessible one generally offers the best viewing chances for rhinos, elephants and swamp deer along with plenty of bird life, including greater adjutant storks (take binoculars). One-hour elephant-back rides are especially satisfying when a ‘team’ of several elephants makes pincer movements, surrounding rhinos without frightening them off.
The northeast’s main gateway city isn’t beautiful, but green, temple-topped hillocks rise curiously above Guwahati’s noisy smog, and its tanks (artificial lakes) and riverbanks are pleasant. Come here to arrange tours to other northeast states then move on swiftly.
Travelling to ‘tea-city’ Dibrugarh usefully closes a loop between Kaziranga and the Ziro–Along–Pasighat route.
A melange of minority cultures and terrain types renders Central Arunachal Pradesh your best bet for visiting tiny tribal villages while working up a sweat.
Fascinating Assam (Asom, Axom) straddles the fertile Brahmaputra valley, making it the most accessible core of India’s northeast. The archetypal Assamese landscape offers mesmerising autumnal vistas over seemingly endless gold-green rice fields patched with palm and bamboo groves and distantly hemmed with hazy blue mountain horizons. In between are equally endless, equally gorgeous manicured tea estates. Unlike Sri Lanka’s or Darjeeling’s, Assamese tea estates are virtually flat and take their particular scenic splendour from the dappled shade of interplanted acacia trees that shield sensitive tea leaves from the blazing sun.
The ‘Land of Dawn-lit Mountains’ grips northern Assam in an embrace of densely forested ridges. These rise to some fabulous snow-capped peaks along the Chinese border. In Arunachal’s deep-cut foothill valleys live at least 65 different tribal groups (101 by some counts) with bucolic cultures and photogenic bamboo-house settlements. High in the beautiful Tawang Valley are several splendid Tibetan-Buddhist monastery villages. China has never formally recognised Indian sovereignty here and it took their surprise invasion of 1962 before Delhi really started funding significant infrastructure. The Chinese voluntarily withdrew. Now border passes are heavily guarded by the Indian military, but the overall atmosphere is extremely calm. Sadly permits remain annoying and expensive enough to deter most potential foreign visitors.