Amlarem trip

*A late publish
Amlarem trip no doubt was a good one! Despite all the initial confusion about roads, the fall was worth it :)

This batch trip (though less than expected number) started at 4.30 am in morning on Saturday last week. Pam had booked 3 buses and we left campus at 5.30am. People in my bus - Rahul, Shashank, Bhim, Balu, Sakshi, Payal, Gaurav, Rajat, Mayur, Anshu, Pooja, Pallvi, Nitisha, Partha, Sunil, Rishabh, Ritika, Dharshanya, Sreya, Shubhi(who joined later), Sushant(who left our bus)

From starting of the journey, everyone was in electric mood. Music and dance and laughter! With DhinkaChika, Character Dhila and DKBose the bus soon left the congested Shillong roads and started the journey on beautiful Meghalaya highway NH44 with lush green mountains and valleys both sides. Soon we stopped for tea somewhere :P (its next to impossible to remember the names of places here) And then we stopped again (chips and water) and again (wrong road) and again (again wrong road). 

When we reached Jowai, a small town on Shillong-Silchar highway everyone was so eager to get out of bus as it was already some 3 hours of driving. But the waterfall was no where to be seen. So as we stopped again at one point where Pam again ran out expecting to see the falls(which everyone was thinking hows it possible seeing that we were driving in almost planes for last 30-40 minutes, Bhim and I also ran. But soon heard from Nikhil nd Pam that they cant see the waterfall but could hear the water. So we all started searching for the fall and the route to it. Pam, Nikhil etc going one direction and Bhim, myself, Hemant, Ankush(both), and Dollar bhai going in other direction. After 10 minutes of walk through the thicks we saw it. It was not at all what we were expecting, not a fall falling from a hill but a wide one on a river. Spending few minutes there 5 of us then headed back to the path on which rest have started descending towards the fall.

Reaching to the bottom was a very slippery business. But in the end the fall was simply awesome.Everybody enjoyed to the max there. Even those who were not in mood of taking a dip were drenched completely.

Spending some 2 hours there we headed back to the bus. Surprisingly climbing was much easier. Once back in bus, we headed towards caves. No one knew what those were. But after some time we reached there. Again a long walk to caves. When we started going down the rough path towards them, there was a bifurcation in the path, one towards caves and second to Bangladesh. Curbing the urge to take international route, we went to caves just to be disappointed by the fact that we cant go in because of not just one but many reasons (read below). So just the pics and we were again back in the bus.
After lots of hanging out from bus, enjoying the rains, plucking flowers and singing to the tune of nature, we reached Dawki, where a board greeted us with "Welcome to India" making us realize that we have reached the end point of the country. Bangladeshi forces were standing in front and Indian Jawans too.We stopped there for some refreshment and headed back to our Shillong. This time Antakshari has taken a nasty face with war going on with songs like "bhag chudhail bhag" targetting people :P

All in all a great trip it was and just waiting to go to exclusive cave expedition trip!

Few facts -
Total distance covered - roughly 190 km. It was round trip (check the map attached. Red dot is Amlarem and bottom red is Dawki)
We nearly touched the Bangladesh border at Dawki.
Pitcher plant pond was one thing which is not to be find anywhere else as it is very localized species and isolated distribution are known to occur in this region only.


Cave was one thing we missed. And after going through the details its like we missed the best part. But point is that for going in that cave we need to have been fully equipped. Meghalaya is in the Top 10 caving destinations of the world. The deepest cave in the subcontinent is in Meghalaya
The longest cave in the subcontinent is in Meghalaya.  Top three longest caves of Meghalaya are Krem Kotsati 21,530m, Synrang Pamiang 14,157m and  Umthloo (Tongseng) 13,413m

And if I am not wrong that the cave we visited was this particular one only, few things about the cave "Krem Chympe" we visited today -

"It is a resurgence cave, situated at a walking distance of about 3 km approximately north along the track from the village of Khaddum to Sielkan. It is a magnificent river cave which would require over 3.5 km of swimming over a series of very large and deep lakes, formed by the existence of more than 50 natural dams or gours, 6 to 8 m high. The cave has a very large colony of bats and possibly cave-adapted fish.

With 10.5 km of surveyed length it is currently India's 5th longest cave. The cave has several leads yet to be explored. Sielkan Pouk which is at the upper reaches, acts as a sink to the cave system."

Also while googling for cave got this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnA0IWnAsc0