Rafi Meander

Sohra was Sohra long before the British turned up and called it Cherrapunji, and the name they gave back suits it better — it sounds like something that grew here, not something that was imposed. The shared taxi from Shillong drops through layers of pine forest and mist, and when the road breaks out onto the plateau the whole world falls away. The land just stops. Three thousand feet down lies the Bangladesh plain, invisible today under cloud. The only evidence that anything exists beyond the cliff is sound: Nohkalikai Falls, a full kilometre of free fall, rumbling up through the fog like a train in a tunnel. This is famously the wettest inhabited place on earth, and September is doing its job.

Sohra 1885 is a heritage cafe housed in the town's former British police station. They kept the cells — you sit in what was once a lockup, eating momos off a steel thali under the old iron grillwork. The place is a genuinely good idea: the building itself is the exhibit, and the food is solid enough that the gimmick wears off after five minutes and you are just having lunch in a handsome old room with thick stone walls that keep the monsoon damp out. It sits on the main road through Sohra, open daily ten to ten.

The Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama has been here since before Independence, running schools for tribal children across the state, a charitable dispensary, mobile medical units, vocational training and a midday meal programme. Nehru himself laid the foundation stone in 1952. They accept donations through their website for the school uniform and textbook fund, which reaches thousands of children each year.