Nohkalikai Falls are fed by the rainwater collected on the summit of a comparatively small plateau and decrease in power during the dry season, from December to February.

[3] According to local legend, in a village called Rangjyrteh, upstream from Nohkalikai Falls, there lived a woman named Likai who found she had no choice but to remarry following the death of her husband.

"Ka Likai" ('Ka' is the prefix for the female gender in Khasi) was left with an infant daughter and scant means of earning a living; in order to sustain herself and feed her child, she took on the arduous job of a porter.

Consumed with jealous rage, he conceived a hatred for his little stepdaughter, finally killing the infant in cold blood and cooking her flesh, after first throwing away her severed head and bones in order to hide – as he thought – all trace of the murder.

She finally ran right off the edge of the plateau, plunging to her death, unable to bear any longer the thought that she had unknowingly cannibalised her murdered daughter.