The title “Wet Picnic” says it all!! It was one of the rainiest, wettest Meghalaya we ever saw since we moved here. My rakhi sister, who happens to be my college junior as well as office colleague for 15 years was visiting with her family. Her husband, a genius was also in my college, but now works for a top secret central govt agency. They have a child, Auro, a 9 year old, supercute, super curious guy who has a question mark reserved for any discussion on any topic in his presence… with his trademark question “Kano bolle?” (In Bengali) meaning “why did you say?”
The fun begins
Agenda of the get together? To meet (on the rakhi day), eat, travel, gossip and have fun for the next few days. Me and my family absolutely love them.. and enjoy their company. The discussion and planning started 5 months in advance. Hence, the level of excitment can be well understood.. especially of the kiddo.
Upon their reaching Shillong, we roamed around the city for the day. However that night, it started to rain incessantly.
Next day we went to visit Cherrapunjee..and Kynrem falls. It was still raining.. and we got the best experience ever of getting drenched in the waterfall after the water droplets bounced back after hitting the rocks. This trip was unique, in the sense it rained throughout the day. I will write in details about this trip in the next blog.
We had planned for a picnic the next day.. for which we all were excited. We planned to carry home cooked meals, cakes as dessert. Picnic basket, picnic mat, folded camp chair (decathlon) were all ready.
With the expectation of getting a clear sunny sky the next day, we all slept after chit chatting till midnight .Next day to our utter dismay it was raining even harder non stop since the previous night. The rain did not even stop even for a minute.
Auro got restless, started to panic thinking how we will go for picnic in this weather!!
He said to his mom,
“Ma, pack the bags.. we are leaving for home now. I came to Shillong just for the picnic!!”
I assured him that, we will go out for picnic no matter what. 😂. He got relieved hearing this.
Update:
Original Venue of the picnic: (Mawlangkhar hills) a.k.a. Dzukou valley of meghalaya near Nongstoin.
Modified venue: Mawphlang sacred forest grassland.
Picnic Menu
Menu of the picnic- Same as decided
Veg Pulao( with joha rice)
Chicken curry( dry/semi gravy)
Freshly cut carrot-cucumber-tomato-onion salad ( on the venue).
Home made milk tea
Samosa/ sweets( outsourced from our fav sweet shop
Finally, we started for the picnic, took a few detours, bought fresh veggies which were farm fresh and went to an awesome cafe in Upper Shillong(ML05 cafe). The rain had subsided a but, still it was drizzling.
Meanwhile, Auro asked, “When will we go for the picnic?”
At around 1:30 pm we reached Mawphlang sacred forest. We parked our car in the parkjng space and clicked a few photographs. We were absolutely delighted to see a group of people from Mizoram nicely clad in their traditional were recording a choir song. The weather, scenery and the soothing music in the backdrop felt magical.
Wet Picnic
After roaming around for a while we set up our dining space in the boot space of our car. I was dicing the veggies for the salad while the others were busy spreading the lunch buffet. Auro sat in the folded chair and was thouroughly enjoying the whole process. We could not spread the picnic mat since the space was wet.. We had to hold our umbrella even while eating.
We waited for this picnic to happen since months. It was not the way we envisaged, but it was an awesome experience. We all enjoyed a lot, the food was amazing, we finished our food in no time. Hence proved that good company matters.. no matter what the situation is!!
Later, we interacted with some of the people from the choir group.. One extremely cute toddler came all the way towards us.. her mom came running to collect her and said, she really likes cars. We had nothing to offer to the kid.. Luckily we had some fruits and gave her two oranges in her two hands which she excitedly accepted.
On our way back, we visited Matliang Park from where we got an amazing view of the Elephant falls. The water was in full spate since it rained quite heavily for around 48 hours. We all had a head massage from Kerala Ayurveda Spa located just besides the Matilang park. It was invigorating and relaxing.
This ‘wet picnic’ was a trip to remember!!
This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2024
