Shillong :India
Shillong, at 1,496 metres (4,908 feet), is a pleasant summer resort surrounded by roiling green hills, pine trees and waterfalls which led the British, and in particular the Scots tea planters, to dub it ‘the Scotland of the East’. It is now the capital of the state of Meghalaya formed in 1971 from part of Assam state. The state consists of the Garo, Khasi and Jaintia hills whose original inhabitants are some of the most ancient peoples in India (see page 172). Shillong itself stands in the Khasi Hills, ll is sufficiently far inland to be protected from the fiercest onslaught of the monsoon, although it is not as dry as the hill stations ot the northwest, as the name of the stale, meaning ‘abode of the clouds’, indicates.

Background
The hills of Meghalaya lie on the edge of the erstwhile kingdom of the Ahoms, a tribe from northern Thailand, who entered Assam in the 13th century. The Ahoms fought off Mughal armies sent to crush ‘the rats of Assam’ but in 1792 succumbed to Burmese invasion. After the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-6, Burma ceded Assam to the East India Company, making it part of the British Empire. Up to this lime the Garo, Jaintia and Khasi communities had maintained their independence in township kingdoms, called the seiyams. The British proceeded to annex these one by one and made them part of British Assam. The new rulers brought Christianity and their own form of administration. In 1848, they persuaded the Garos, who had once practised human sacrifice, to take down the human skulls on display in their houses.