Day 124, Shillong [Friday 4th April 2008]

After yet more refreshing cuppas of rich, strong Assam tea we get a bus towards Shillong, a 4 hour journey out of Assam and into Meghalaya. Then we swap buses and spend another 4 hours climbing slowly up to Shillong, watching people through the windows enthusiastically chewing paan. They seem to be really committed paan chewers up here.

Shillong, we discover, is a grotty, busy, noisy city, lacking any of the charm and possibly fresh air one might expect from a hill station. Although it's high up in the hills it seems to be heavily industrialized. The hotels, too, are grubby and overpriced.

The people here have the familiar northeastern look - strong east Asian features mixed with Western clothes - skinny jeans are in. There are also Khasi tribal people here from the surrounding Meghalayan hills. They wear distinctive gingham-check 'aprons' - a strip of material wrapped around the body and clipped at the shoulder.

Everybody here chews paan, or betel nut. Everyone carries with them a small package consisting of several lumps of nut and some betel leaves smeared with white paste, all wrapped up in a large leaf and tied with an elastic band. Men, women, children, they all have the telltale red stained teeth and gums, the bloody red lips.

That night at the Centrepoint hotel we eat delicious chicken kebabs from the tandoor, and I finally find masala Coke on a menu, although it turns out to be the same old stinky, eggy masala that I hate.

At our hotel, the Hotel Monsoon, which resembles a doss house, we watch the disarmingly childlike figure of the Dalai Lama on an NDTV interview. He is relating how he was discovered as the reincarnation of the previous Lama, and how he later used to cheat during his tutelage by looking at the answers to questions over his teacher's shoulder!