Getting Around Meghalaya: Taxi, Self-Drive or a Group Tour?

For a first trip, hire a private car with a local driver for the whole circuit. It costs more than shared transport, but Meghalaya's sights are spread along roads with no buses between them, and the driver usually ends up doubling as your guide.

There are four ways to get around. Each suits a different kind of traveller, and one of them has become more complicated than it used to be.

The four options

Private car with a driver

This is what almost every one of our routes uses, and what we'd suggest for a first visit.

The reason is geography. Nohkalikai, Wei Sawdong, the Mawkdok viewpoint and Arwah Cave sit along the Sohra road, several kilometres apart, and none of them has a bus stop. Dawki is three hours south of Shillong. Mawlynnong is another hour on from there. You cannot string those together on shared transport in one day.

A driver who runs this circuit every week also knows what a map doesn't: which viewpoint fogs in by 11am, where to stop for lunch on the Dawki road, when to leave Sohra so you're off the hill road before dark. In December the sun goes down around 4:30pm, so that last one matters more than it sounds.

You pay per vehicle, not per person. That is why group size moves the price of a Meghalaya trip more than any hotel choice does. Two people pay for a whole car; five people split it. The full breakdown is in Meghalaya trip cost.

Group tours

Our group departures run a shared Tempo Traveller on a fixed route. That's how our six-day group trip comes in at 22,000 rupees a head, against 25,300 for the private version of a similar route.

What you give up is the clock. If the group leaves Nohkalikai after twenty minutes and you wanted an hour, you leave after twenty minutes. For a solo traveller that's usually a fair trade. For a couple on their honeymoon, usually not.

Self-drive

Rental cars and self-drive apps operate out of Guwahati, and plenty of people ask whether they can simply drive themselves. You can. Three things make it harder than it looks.

The plates. A car rented in Guwahati carries Assam (AS) registration, and that has been a flashpoint. After violence in Shillong on 19 August 2026, taxi associations in both states blockaded the route and Assam-registered tourist cars were turned back. The two Chief Ministers settled it within a week, Meghalaya agreed to pay for damaged Assam vehicles, and a joint meeting in September set up a committee of both states' transport commissioners to handle future disputes. Tourist traffic is moving again.

It has flared up before, though. The lowest-risk choice is still a Meghalaya-registered (ML) vehicle with a local driver.

The dark. The Guwahati to Shillong highway is a good road. Past Shillong, the roads to Sohra, Dawki and Jowai are narrow, twisting and barely lit, and fog can close in on the Sohra road inside a few minutes.

Parking. The popular viewpoints at Sohra and Dawki fill by mid-morning at weekends. A driver drops you and goes round again. You can't.

If you're an experienced hill driver with no fixed dates, self-drive is workable outside the monsoon.

On a first visit, we wouldn't.

Shared Sumos and buses

Shared Tata Sumos and state buses link the main towns: Guwahati, Shillong, Sohra, Jowai. They're cheap, and they're how a lot of people here get about.

They run centre to centre. They won't stop at Nohkalikai, and they won't wait while you walk down to Wei Sawdong. To reach the sights from a town you'd take a local taxi anyway, and by evening the saving is smaller than it looked in the morning.

The one leg where shared transport works well is Guwahati to Shillong itself. There's more on that in the Guwahati to Shillong guide.

How long the drives take

Add time for getting into Shillong. The traffic is slow most of the day and worst on weekend evenings.

Which should you pick?

• First visit, two to six people: a private car with a driver.
• Solo on a budget: a group tour, or shared Sumos between towns and local taxis for the sights.
• Family with older parents: a private car, and ask for one that's easy to climb into.
• Experienced driver, dry season, open dates: self-drive, in an ML-plate car if you can get one.

If your flights are booked and you only want the car sorted, send us your dates and group size. We'll price the vehicle separately from the stays so you can see exactly where the money goes.