Place: Shilong

The main city in Meghalaya. Meghalaya is seriously not like the rest of India at all! Here people mostly watch / play soccer instead of cricket, do love marriages instead of arranged, watch Beauty and the Beast in theaters instead of Badrinath Ki Dulhania. They eat non-veg, speak Khasi and English, are Christian, and listen to rock and roll.

Also people were generally very nice, especially the farther out we went into the small villages. Taxis gave us local prices by default, no one tried to scam us. We left our hostel early and the owner, Hagrid, wanted to reimburse us since we paid too much. One time we hitchhiked with a taxi taking a family home and when we offered the driver, Salvation (yeah, people here have the best names), some money, he genuinely seemed surprised and insisted on only taking half at most.

Something unique to this area that’s different from not just India but most of the world is they have a matrilineal system! The youngest daughter in the family inherits everything, the men take the women’s surnames, and men move in with the women.

Food: Chizza!

Something we’d only seen at KFCs here. Kinda like an open face double down - veggies and cheese sprinkled on top of a piece of fried chicken that you eat like a pizza. Tasted so very tender and greasy, A++.