An evening in NEHU guest house

 The North East Hill University campus, a sprawling 1225-acre landscaped beauty has several dwelling places. If you happen to stay there, don't forget to take an evening stroll. This campus looks even more enchanting during evening hours with the setting sun and clean air with ducks quacking in the nearby pond. Wildflowers are growing on both sides of the road and are quite pretty. One can take numerous shortcuts and pavements crisscrossed across the campus to reach different locations. It is very peaceful to walk during the evening as well. Near the duck pond, there are lots of activities with students having pleasantries, some feeding the fish and many onlookers stopping by to have a glimpse of the ducks.

The campus is full of Pinus trees that look like Casuarinas. The Casuarinas are  Angiosperms and true flowering plants. The Pinus trees on the other hand are gymnosperms with needle-like leaves. The botanist in me, can't help but wonder how much similarity these two distantly placed species have. Both have cone-like seeds and it is very difficult to tell them apart. In addition, other wild plants are growing rampantly such as Solanum virginiaum. This plant has medicinal properties. If you plan to take the seeds away and grow these plants yourself, then this is the place you should visit.

Walking in NEHU guest house in the dawn

 Morning in NEHU Guest House:

The day breaks quite early in NEHU guest house as we call to “North East Hill University guest house” in short. This is a hamlet in Shillong with picturesque view and beautiful ambience. This is a campus in the Shillong suburbs spreading over 1225 acres of land. It accommodates several institutes namely the IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University), National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), a central school, Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Sports Authority of India (SAI) and The English and Foreign Language University (EFLU), apart from regular university departments. The campus also boasts of a small shopping center where you find almost everything needed to run your home. There are few eat-outs. The eateries serve Indian, Chinese and Khasi delicacies. Food is delectable to say the least. In addition, there are student canteens, student dhabas spread across the campus

The functional gate is gate number 2 through which all the vehicles enter the campus. We lived in the Tirat Sing guest house, that is the new guest house. The rooms are big with double beds and the ambience is good. You may find some of the electric sockets not working but there are plenty others to make your job done. They provide electric kettles for hitting water and materials for making tea. You can rise up to faint beams of sunlight in an autumn morning. Surprisingly, the birds don’t chirp. There are not enough birds there. The locals say, the birds were eaten up by people, so there are unexpectedly low number of birds. Only you can spot a sparrow or a mynah. No large birds!!

There is quite a good possibility that the place rains through autumn. In the morning, there is cloud floating over the campus and one can literally walk through the clouds. The mornings are best to walk around the campus. There is a beautiful duck pond full of fishes and ducks quacking all over the pond.  It is good to explore all the small roads and pedestrian crossing to find shortcut between the roads. The distance between the old and the new guest house is about 2.5 kms. In between there are numerous departments and small lanes and by lanes to explore. The library building is huge and is straight way from gate number 2. The high and low slopes make it the ideal place for strolling, breathing fresh air and burning calories. You can spot friendly stray dogs that generally don’t harm anyone. So, one does not really have to run away from them. Happy walking in the campus.