Suman, my friend of 14 yrs, and I decided to go on a vacation to Meghalaya and Assam.

It was a vacation like no other, as it was a "budget" trip and involved trekking... 2 things I never associate with vacations. Anyway sometimes things just happen... We have been best friends for so long but this was our first "alone" trip together.

Anyway, the research monkey that she is, she found the most awesome things for us to do. My contributions to the trip was a long list of things I didn't want to do and my credit card :).

An eventless flight to Gauhati led to a rather interesting cab ride with 3 strange men to Shilong. We then immersed ourselves in the beauty of the hills, happy mountain and sweet falls ... All breathtakingly beautiful.

We also trekked to go see the living root bridge... Simply awesome!

What followed next is something I didn't think existed... Cleanest village in Asia. A cute little village with some 70 odd huts with even their path ways cleaner than my living room. A hot tea and big bowl of Maggie later, we went to chill in our cute little tree house.

The most unreal thing was us hearing Metallica music in the middle of that little village... Turns out that the youngsters of Northeast are big rock fans... It was surreal.. We had a good nights sleep amidst crocking frogs and burning coal (to keep us warm and insect free)

The next day saw us trekking to see multiple hanging bridges and also the most sought after double decker living root bridge. (Villagers tied long roots of rubber tree to make it one big Natural bridge). The pain of trekking 2 hrs instantly disappeared at the sight of this magnificent bridge.

But trekking back to civilization was another horror story all together.

6am pickup time to get to Assam, khaziranga. With this being a budget trip, we hitchhiked in various non glamourous means of transportation and rubbed shoulders with the locals.

The effort was worth it as the safaris were mind-blowing. Be it the single horned rhino, the awesome eagles, the wild elephants, boar, buffalos or 100s of deers. It was a sight for sore eyes...

Obviously our adventures continued as we became the latest victims of flight cancellations and all hell broke loose.

But the highlight for me was spending quality time with a friend I love dearly and doing something I never thought I would enjoy doing (trek)... In all honesty my next trip will have to be super fancy ...just to redeem myself... But it was worth the experience.