The Scotland of the East — cloud forests, living root bridges, the wettest hills on Earth, and a rock music culture unlike anywhere else in India
Shillong is the capital of Meghalaya ('Abode of Clouds'), a hill station at 1,491 metres in the Khasi Hills of northeast India where the monsoon drops up to 12,000mm of rain per year — making the region the wettest inhabited place on Earth. The city is unusual in India for its British colonial hill-station heritage (stone churches, golf courses, market squares), its matrilineal Khasi tribal society, and an outsized rock music scene — Shillong produces more heavy-metal and alternative bands per capita than almost any other Indian city. Day trips lead to the living root bridges of Cherrapunji a…
Shillong was established as the capital of British Assam in 1874, chosen for its cooler climate and defensible hill position. The Khasi people had governed the region for centuries under a system of matrilineal clans (property and surnames pass through the mother) that persists today — Meghalaya remains one of the few matrilineal societies in the world. After Indian Independence and the reorganisation of states, Shillong became the capital of the new state of Meghalaya in 1972. The 1897 Great Assam Earthquake (8.1 Mw) destroyed most of the original town; much of the surviving colonial archite…