Ni Dieu Ni Maitre

I took up hiking after a nearly 50 year layoff when I had devoted my energies to bicycling and cycle touring. Restarting at age 75 was a most pleasant experience, with the surprisingly added benefit of strengthening my lower back muscles and solving a decades long chronic back problem. And so, the one remaining task in Shillong was to climb to the top of Shillong Peak at around 6,600 feet. Out of hiking shape? Yes, but I had spent a week of daily walks and hikes in the up and down heights of Meghalaya, and so, onward.

The stairs to the top are located just around the corner from the hotel, and there are many, many of them. As mentioned earlier, the ground here is a pinkish hard clay which, when wet, is very slippery, thus the use of stairs as it is generally always at the least damp. I did not think I could do this climb, but physical perseverance is built into my nature by now.

Slowly, with frequent stops to catch my breath, I moved ever upward. It doesn’t seem as though this trail gets a lot of use as parts of it were nearly overgrown with little thorny vines. However, there were people living up here in small shacks and I stopped to let a flock of small black goats cross the stairs. Eventually the shepherd came along as well and invited me to his camp for tea.

But the mood was on to progress upward, and I told him I would see him on the way down. Eventually, the steps ended and there was a brief dirt trail to a concrete walkway which seemed to wander upward and around the mountain to the official peak at the top. Unfortunately, this uphill trail was covered with pine needles and other vegetative debris and was damp and quite slippery. This was manageable enough going uphill, but as I walked along the thought of coming back down on the slippery, occasionally steep concrete and its potential for injury grew and grew.

The dirt trail

A bit of the concrete trail on the left here. Going back down, I mainly stayed on the dirt where possible and only slid down on my butt once on the concrete. And so, I didn’t get to the official top, but very nearly and that will have to suffice. Here’s the trail to the shepherds encampment.