My First Durga Puja and some very friendly folk!
At the Earle Holiday Home in Shillong we prepared to leave. A genteel crowd of middle-class holiday makers who had previously ignored us raved about us and decided our photo would be framed and put on the wall. We answered questions, celebrity-style, and rode off with a good (though surreal) send-off. Meghalaya was stunning, but somewhat tense. They were a tough crowd. Generally there were more hostile stares than usual, and even with a huge grin and the all-encompassing respectful head-waggle you could only just garner a hint of a smile. The scenery, though, was damn fine. It was rolling hills with a hint of jungliness. The banana palms carried on and on, and I think date palms started again from the look of them. There were waterfalls and things of that ilk. Everyone played out their lives on the road again, and the back bamboo stilts of the houses on the roadside were sometimes very, very tall. You could see Jhum farming, the rotational crop farming t...