Nartiang Monoliths

Last week my friend Ruhi took me along with some other friends to Nartiang, which was once the summer capital of the Jaintia kings, who ruled most of this area from the 1500's until they were deposed by the British East India Trading Company in the late 1800s. When the power shifted, trade shifted as well, so that the once-prosperous town of Nartiang is a quiet backwater.

However, it still boasts the finest collection of monoliths in the area, on a special site where the king's soldiers gathered and erected large stones and set huge flat slabs on smaller rocks to create stalls where people could display their goods and elders could gather for meetings. It was quite an incredible experience. From pictures I had seen the stones looked rather small, but once there for myself I could see that it was more like a giant's playground. Just to give you an idea of the scale, here I am standing on a huge rock slab next to one of the stones. If you come to northeast India, this is one sight you won't want to miss.

Below is some video from our visit: http://youtu.be/YDk-IwlIwfU

Krangsuri Falls

Earlier this week my friend Peter was in town looking for speakers of a different language. To aid in his search I introduced him to Ma Jowai, an older Pnar gentleman who knows a lot of people and has been helping me learn Pnar. Ma Jowai invited us to go with him to another waterfall, Krangsuri. So on wednesday we hit the road. Along the way we stopped to take pictures at an ancient bridge made by the Jaintia kings in the 1600-1700s. Just to give you an idea of the scale of the blocks they used, here's a picture of me and Ma Jowai on the bridge.

We continued on to the falls - it was a beautiful day for visiting the falls, with warm sun and slight breeze. Peter and I marveled at the stonework for the path on the way down, and another bridge along the way with a really cool arch. We walked around on the top of the falls, where the water escaped through the holes in the sandstone. I scoped out a spot to jump from when there's more water. The drop is only about 30 feet, and the water was so clear you could see where the boulders were.

Down at the bottom the overhang was pretty extreme, thus the word "krang" in Pnar, which describes this kind of cave. I'm told that the word "suri" is a form of "churi", which is the old word for sword, as this is the place where the Jaintia king's soldiers would sharpen their swords. I'm looking forward to coming back in the summer, when the water is more extreme.