The plan on Day 2 was to wake up by 5.30 am, take a walk around our resort, have breakfast by the pool and leave by 9 am to check into our next hotel for the day. We wanted to drop our bags at the next hotel as it was very close to Police Bazar, the main market area of Shillong, so we wouldn’t have to come back all the way to the Umiam Lake area to pick up our stuff. Also, we were planning on doing the David Scott Trail, a 16 km hiking trail which was some 30+ kms from Police Bazaar. The idea was to take public transport from the market after dumping our bags in the other hotel. But things don’t always go according to plan.
We slept at around 3 am, so waking up at 5.30 am was way too ambitious. When my alarm went off in the morning, I groaned saying “guys I don’t think we can do David Scott”. Both my friends were kind of relieved that I said it out loud, because nobody was up for it. So we caught on some extra sleep and got up by 7 am, chilled in the resort and decided to check out police bazar and then head to Elephant Falls, a spot that we planned on covering on the last day of our trip.
We had lunch at a cute little cafe called the Lightup Cafe and the food was pretty good. We had ordered mixed noodles and pork fry. The place was walking distance from our hotel in the Nongrimbah area. Since we were running late, we decided not to rely on public transport to get to elephant falls. Uber showed Rs 700 one way. We decided to check with the driver who had dropped us off to shillong and he agreed on Rs 800 to not just take us to Elephant Falls, but also a place called Ward’s Lake (suggested to us by our hotel guys) and drop us back to our hotel.
Elephant Falls was kind of pretty, nothing amazing, but worth a visit if you have time on your hand. We spent about 40 minutes there. The Falls opens at 9 am in the morning and is open till 5 pm in the evening.
After the falls, we headed to Ward’s Lake, which was very ordinary, it was a park with a lake in it. There was an option to go boating, but we were not interested. We headed to the canteen in the park and had chicken momos. After the Lake, our driver asked us if we wanted to see the Cathedral of Mary and since we still had some time, we went to see the church. We spotted a food truck outside the church and had some kebabs.
After looking at the church we asked out driver to drop us off at the Police Bazaar so that we could do some shopping and have dinner at one of the many restaurants the place had to offer. It was very cold by then and all three of us were in summer shorts, our faces screamed tourists.
“All the locals are wearing sweaters and jackets man, it’s not that cold!” I exclaimed. But well, it was not the shorts kind of weather either. So we drew a LOT of stares. It was funny.
Any way, walking around police bazaar did not yield much, we didn’t find anything interesting to buy. We went to a place called ‘The Evening Club’ for drinks, it had a very nice live band set-up but live music happens only on Wednesday nights and the weekends and sometimes on Fridays. We were there on a Monday night, so the place was almost deserted. After downing our drinks, we packed some chicken kebabs from the streets. They weren’t that great by the way. Even though they look pretty amazing when the guys are making it.
