Shillong & Guwahati — Meghalaya with the Brahmaputra

South out of Guwahati and up onto the Khasi hills, about three hours, with Umiam reservoir filling the valley below the road near the top of the climb. Shillong at around 1,500 m was the capital of undivided Assam under the British and still carries the churches, the polo ground and the pine slopes that earned it the nickname of a Scottish hill town. Elephant Falls and Shillong Peak in the afternoon, and Police Bazar in the evening.

Two hours south to Sohra, where the plateau ends in a sheer drop toward the Bangladesh plain and the monsoon arrives with more force than anywhere else on earth. Nohkalikai drops around 340 m in one fall. Mawsmai cave is a walk-through limestone passage, lit and short; Arwah nearby carries fossils in its walls. The Seven Sisters falls pour off the escarpment when the season has water in them, and in March and April it often does not.

South-east toward the Bangladesh border for the living root bridge at Riwai, where ficus roots have been trained across a stream over decades until they carry weight — infrastructure that grows stronger with age. Mawlynnong next to it is known across India for its cleanliness and has a bamboo sky walk into the canopy with the Bangladesh plain beyond. The border here is a line on a map through the same landscape, and seeing that is part of the point.

Off the plateau and back to the Brahmaputra, three hours, stopping at Umiam on the descent. Guwahati is the largest city in the north-east and sits on both banks of a river that here is well over a kilometre wide. The afternoon takes Kamakhya on Nilachal hill — a Shakta temple of the first importance, rebuilt in the sixteenth century on a much older site, where the goddess is worshipped without an image. A sunset boat on the river closes the day.

Umananda in the morning if the ferry is running — a Shiva temple on the smallest inhabited river island in the world, ten minutes out into the Brahmaputra, with a colony of golden langur on the rock. The Assam State Museum in the city holds a strong sculpture and textile collection if the river is closed. Then to the airport, which is on the far bank, so the crossing needs to be allowed for in the timing.