Editor,
I am a tourist from Delhi who visited different parts of Assam and Meghalaya with my family between December 19-28. I had varying experiences at different places but they were all very pleasant. My stay at Mawlynnong and at the cottages at No 1 UCC Road, overlooking the serene Umiam Lake were particularly memorable. However, we were very disappointed with the services at Orchid Polo Towers at Cherrapunjee. The waiters were very uncooperative and unwilling to treat their guests with decency. We have heard so much about the Khasi hospitality and so were not prepared for that kind of cold treatment. The hotel is quite steeply priced and should therefore have had facilities for drivers to stay in since we had come in a tourist taxi but the driver had to go back all the way to Shillong and return to pick us up the next day. Is this the facility offered by hotels in Meghalaya?
There is so much that has been spoken about the beauty of Meghalaya and there is no denying this fact. There are many lovely places, hills and dales that are so pleasant to the eyes but these sights are rudely broken by stretches where man has gouged out the earth for pulling out rocks, stones and sand and bringing down an entire hill side without following any scientific system of quarrying. The forests are quickly denuding and when I asked some of the locals here if there are any regulations they said that the land belongs to private individuals and neither the Government nor any other authority has any control over the use of these private lands. This sounds like a very self destructive programme of action. I wonder why the communities themselves regulate such reckless quarrying. I was told that coal and limestone mining too have destroyed large tracts of forest land and that the National Green Tribunal finally had to put a ban on mining activities. Perhaps that is what happens when self regulation fails.
Meghalaya tourism to me is good in parts and private initiatives seem to do better than Government ones. My family and I landed at the famous Pine Wood Hotel and since we felt terribly cold we wanted to have chicken soup. The time then was 6.30 pm. We were told that the cooks don’t come until after 7 pm. So soup and dinner must wait until after 7 pm. I never heard of any restaurant telling anyone that they have to wait until a certain hour to order certain items on the menu. We left and went to Cloud Nine at Centre Point and there had some hot chicken soup.
This in short is our experience of tourism in Meghalaya and believe me we did quite a bit of touring.
Yours etc.,
PK Singh,
New Delhi