Cost of Living in Shillong
Where this figure comes from. No cost survey covers Shillong, so the $560 a month above is our own estimate rather than a measurement. On 330 of our 981 city guides the figure is built from a published Numbeo basket, a one-bedroom rent in the centre plus one person's monthly costs without rent, converted to USD; this city is not one of them. Treat it as a starting point and check current rental listings before you budget against it. How we source everything.
Budget around $560 a month. A one-bedroom runs roughly $150 to $350, with Laitumkhrah and the areas near the golf course at the top and the outer neighbourhoods considerably cheaper. Market produce at Iewduh, one of the largest markets in northeast India, is cheap and the region grows excellent oranges, pineapple and the fiery bhut jolokia chilli. Eating out is inexpensive and Khasi cooking, which uses a great deal of pork and rice, is quite different from mainland Indian food. Imported goods carry a markup because everything comes up the road from Guwahati. Utilities are modest and heating is unnecessary at this altitude.
Where to Work in Shillong
Connectivity is adequate. Fibre reaches parts of Shillong at reasonable speeds and mobile data from Jio and Airtel covers the city and the main roads, though the northeast is served by fewer routes than the rest of India and outages happen. Power cuts are common enough that an inverter is standard. There is a small coworking presence aimed at the local student and startup population. The time zone is five and a half hours ahead of GMT, and Shillong sits far enough east that the sun rises before five in summer, which is a genuine oddity of a country with a single time zone.
Getting Around Shillong
Shillong is hilly and spread across ridges, so walking works within neighbourhoods and not between them. Shared taxis are the local institution: they run fixed routes for a few rupees and you share with whoever is going the same way, which is how almost everyone moves. Private taxis and ride-hailing exist. The city has no railway and no working airport for most purposes, so the road down to Guwahati, about three hours through the hills, is the practical connection to the rest of India. Cherrapunji and Mawlynnong are day trips, and the living root bridges at Nongriat are a serious hike.
Sorting transport? Book an airport transfer, or compare car rental on Auto Europe and QEEQ.
Visas for Shillong
India's e-Visa applies here as elsewhere, issued for thirty days, one year or five years depending on the option chosen and applied for online before travel. Meghalaya no longer requires an Inner Line Permit, unlike several neighbouring states, so a standard Indian visa is enough. Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram do have additional permit requirements, which matters if you plan to travel on. There is no remote work visa and working on a tourist visa is not permitted. Foreigners are required to register with the local authorities on some visa types.
Best Time to Visit Shillong
October to April is the dry season and the best window, cool at around twenty degrees by day and genuinely cold at night in December and January, which is why Shillong was built as a hill station. May to September is the monsoon, and this is the wettest region on earth: Mawsynram and Cherrapunji, both within an hour, hold the world records for annual rainfall, and Shillong itself gets more than two metres. The waterfalls are extraordinary in the monsoon and the roads are difficult. Autumn, after the rains stop, is when the hills are greenest and clearest.
Pros and Cons of Shillong
The case for Shillong is a cool hill climate in the tropics, a Khasi culture that is matrilineal and quite unlike the rest of India, the best live music scene in the northeast by a wide margin, and access to landscapes that genuinely have no equivalent: living root bridges grown from rubber fig over generations, the wettest places on the planet, and clear rivers in limestone gorges. The case against is the isolation, since everything comes through Guwahati, the monsoon, which is not a season but a condition here, and infrastructure that lags the rest of the country.
Who Shillong Is For
Shillong suits anyone drawn to northeast India, which is culturally and visually a different country from the plains, along with hikers, cavers and musicians, since the local rock scene is a genuine phenomenon and English-language music has been part of Khasi life for generations. It suits English speakers particularly, because Meghalaya is one of the more anglophone states in India. It does not suit anyone who needs to be somewhere quickly, since the road to Guwahati is the only route, and it does not suit anyone who would find five months of rain difficult.
Photo: Prasanta Kr Dutta / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
