Day 125, Shillong [Saturday 5th April 2008]
Next day: Day 126, Guwahati — [Sunday 6th April 2008]
We are woken by the hotel receptionist calling our room to ask, in the manner of a dejected lover, why we didn't use the hotel restaurant for dinner last night. To further add to the pathos he asks us why we didn't order bed tea for this morning.
We walk to Ward's Lake and go boating. The lake is edged with lawns full of pretty flowers. There are several Raj-era bungalows here. We don't know whether the tin roofed structure is vrnacular to Scotland or if it was a necessary adaptation for the Indian climate.
We walk to the Rhino museum, only to find that it's closed for an elongated lunch break. Instead we get a taxi (a souped-up Mini Metro, with a spoiler) to the "9th Shillong International Craft Fair", which turns out to be several aisles of cheap plastic goods, interspersed with some of the international invitees — Kenya (wooden masks) and Thailand (t-shirts, hats and jewellery). The local pickle and sweet makers haven't yet developed a try-before-you-buy approach to selling, insisting that you blindly purchase the sealed jars. So we don't buy any.
There is a profoundly depressing cathedral here, coated in dour grey paint, and almost without form. Inside, we read with surprise the inexplicably gushing comments in the guestbook. Over the road is a Salesian Training Centre. Salesian is the Catholic order who ran the school I had the misfortune to grow up in. They get everywhere!
At this point it buckets down with rain for the rest of the day, so we stay in our hotel room watching Arsenal vs Liverpool (1-1) before hitting the surprisingly swish, moodily lit and gobsmackingly expensive "Cloud 9" bar at the top of the Centrepoint Hotel. Rs. 150 for a beer!