Meal in the Hills - Mawpdai, Part 1

I’ve been lucky to travel to several very remote villages of India, to learn about their culture, cuisine and other ways of life. Mawpdai, a small village in the south-western corner of the East Khasi Hills district in Meghalaya, was one such experience.

A fair number of people even in Shillong didn’t know where it was, including our taxi driver-cum-local translator, who otherwise claimed to have done a lot of trips into the interiors of the district and state. But then he drove a tourist taxi, and few tourists were as crazy as us, wanting to drive for hours to get to a remote little village, and then stay there for the night. We joked about this almost every day, about how he must think we were loonies for making him take us to such far off places on almost non-existent roads. He chuckled, but didn’t make any attempt to deny it...

So off we went to Mawpdai, still quite unsure if it fell in the East Khasi district or in the neighboring South West Khasi, as different maps told different stories. Unsurprisingly, we got lost on the way...

Despite erratic mobile networks, poor roads and long distances without any signs of civilization, one remarkable thing in Meghalaya was that every single village and hamlet we passed, without exception, had a name board at its entrance: “Mawlynnong”, “Sohrarim"... And yet, incredibly, we missed the board for Mawpdai village and drove on for a good 10-12 kilometers before realizing our mistake and backtracking.

Finally, we made it to Mawpdai. We were hosted by Bah Joyful Son (yes, that was his full and real name), or Bah Joy for short -- Bah being a respectful address, meaning Brother in Khasi. Bah Joy was a teacher at the village school, and the younger brother of Bah Kras, the Headman of Mawpdai.

This small village was known for one mystical entity on a nearby hill – a huge hollow fig tree. Discerning adventure tourists sought out this tree at Mawpdai. They would come to climb it, not from the outside like a one would a normal tree, but from the inside, through its hollow heart!

In the morning, before our departure from Mawpdai, we too trekked up the hill to the tree. It reminded me of a book I had in my childhood called African Tales from Tendai’s Grandmother, which often narrated stories of Zimbabwe’s omnipresent baobab tree. This hollow fig tree, standing on the hill watching over the village, felt like the baobab of Mawpdai.

The small settlement behind the tree - barely visible - is Mawpdai Village

We climbed the tree -- yes, from inside -- and I was flooded with more nostalgia of my impish schoolchild self, who spent more time on trees than in the classroom at school!

Monkey-me, inside the tree!

My Dad climbing the tree through it's hollow trunk

But, adventures aside, we had come here for the food! A lot of what the residents of Mawpdai cook and eat is foraged or grown within a kilometer of their homes. While Mawlynnong and Dawki are famous for being close to the India-Bangladesh border, Mawpdai is also situated so far south that it too overlooks the border. Whatever little produce the locals do purchase comes from the weekly market at Balat, a border town just barely on the Indian side of the border.

In the distance, beyond the river, lie the plains of Bangladesh

While the farm-to-fork experience -- where guests harvest their own ingredients from a farm and prepare a meal with it -- is becoming an interesting movement in urban communities, our evening in Mawpdai was a farm-to-fork experience like no other! We picked vegetables from the backyard, and plucked greens and spices growing in awkward shrubs in cracks between the wall stones. We even nabbed a chicken straight off the neighbor’s roof (all entirely legit, of course)! And in the span of just over an hour, all these lovely ingredients were being stirred and simmered to make our dinner!

Vegetables growing in the backyard

Wild greens growing between the stones

My meal, its flavours still linger

And boy, was it a tasty dinner. I can still vividly recall the flavours, as if I'd just eaten it yesterday!! But more on the meal itself tomorrow, because that’s a whole other story...