The Living Root Bridges of Meghalaya

One bridge in a 2019 study of Meghalaya’s living root bridges had been growing for 66 years and was still not fully functional. The researchers called it bridge number 50.^[1] Its roots had grown at different times, with younger strands joining much older ones. A tree could be alive, and a structure could be decades old, without yet giving people the crossing they needed.

That gap between growing and becoming useful explains much of the work. Khasi and Jaintia communities guide the aerial roots of rubber figs across streams and ravines, then keep tending them.^[5] The tree supplies new material. People decide where it should go, join it to older roots and return when the supporting bamboo needs replacing. A bridge takes shape through those repeated encounters.

The crossing before the photograph

In 1844, Henry Yule described a bridge made by the people of Ringhot so they could reach Cherra during the rains. Two large roots ran above one another, with further roots laced into a ladder-like arrangement. The span hung above the dry-season river, linking banks that became difficult to cross when the water rose.^[3] The object that surprised the visiting engineer answered an everyday need.

Yule first suspected that this crossing was an isolated curiosity. He then learned of several more nearby and measured another substantial span.^[3] The knowledge was already distributed across communities. His description records an encounter with a working practice; it gives no reliable date for the practice’s beginning.

The southern side of the Shillong Plateau supplies a demanding setting. Monsoon air arriving from the Bay of Bengal rises against the hills around Sohra, also known as Cherrapunji, bringing exceptionally heavy rain.^[12] The steep country contains rivers, ravines and settlements whose routes have to work through that season. A crossing connects fields and markets as well as neighbouring villages.

Researchers surveying the bridges found most in rainforest valleys. Their interviews recorded paths linking villages, cropland and markets, while accounts of lost bridges named floods, landslides and fire among the causes.^[1] Living roots offer one response within that landscape. They still need a suitable site, time and someone prepared to return.

The familiar photographs show thick, interwoven roots already spanning water. Before that stage, a builder needs a tree with roots that can be directed. The choice of species is where the construction begins.

A tree that can make another connection

The rubber fig, Ficus elastica, produces aerial roots that descend from its branches and can thicken into strong supports. It belongs to the fig family and has a native range extending through parts of South and Southeast Asia.^[13] Its habit of sending roots beyond the trunk makes it unusually suited to a structure that must reach across a gap.

The basic construction starts with a tree or cutting near the proposed crossing. Builders guide young roots across a framework, then establish them in soil on the opposite bank.^[1] Those roots remain connected to a living plant. Once anchored, they can continue thickening and becoming part of a more substantial structure.

Different crossings use different supports. Bamboo or wooden frameworks can carry the early roots; hollowed areca-palm trunks can guide and protect them. Some bridges have grown in conjunction with existing steel-wire crossings.^[2] The method adapts to what is available and to whether people need to keep using the route while growth continues.

Morningstar Khongthaw, a Khasi conservationist from Rangthylliang, describes planting on both banks when possible so the roots can meet sooner. He guides them during the monsoon, when they are pliable, but leaves very young roots alone until they are ready to handle.^[10] Selecting a root and choosing when to move it are parts of the same judgement.

Bamboo provides an initial route across the space. The work is far from over when a root follows it. To become a bridge, separate growing strands must begin to act together, and the tree itself contributes to that process.

Where separate roots become one

Roots pressed together can fuse, a process called inosculation. In their fieldwork, Ferdinand Ludwig and his colleagues recorded connections at individual nodes and along longer stretches where roots had been twisted together.^[1] A knot can become a living joint. Over time, the original boundary between two strands may be difficult to see.

The same study examined how roots change their shape under load. Horizontal roots tended to develop differently from vertical ones; some had an inverted-T cross-section, with more material below. The team interpreted this as growth responding to bending.^[1] The structural material can alter its own geometry while people continue guiding the larger framework.

This is one reason engineers have taken an interest. The Munich research group brought botanical and architectural questions to the same crossings, interviewing builders and using photographs to document complex root networks. Wilfrid Middleton stressed how little of the building knowledge had previously been written down.^[5] Scientific measurement gives another way to describe a practice already learned through work.

Spoorthy Raman’s report on the research also brings in architect Sanjeev Shankar, who points to the pressures facing the bridges and the possibilities for future architecture.^[6] Understanding the shape is only part of the task. A structure depends on the continuing health of its tree, the people maintaining it and the route it serves.

The study also leaves engineering questions unresolved. How much strength comes from an individual root, how much from the fused joints, and how much from the whole network? Anchorage and the arrangement of supporting strands add further variables. Measuring the outline is a beginning; understanding which parts carry particular forces asks for further investigation.^[1]

The unfinished crossing makes the limits of a simple timetable clear. The researchers could not give one dependable interval from planting to full use: span, conditions and growth all mattered.^[1] A claim that every root bridge is ready after a fixed number of years would hide the most important part of the building process—its attention to the individual site.

Two decks, and the hands behind them

At Nongriat, below Sohra, two living spans cross one above the other. The village is reached from Tyrna by a long stair route, and the double-decker bridge has become one of Meghalaya’s best-known images.^[14] Its outline is immediately legible. The ages and working histories of all its roots are much harder to establish.

Accounts based on villagers’ recollections place the decks in different generations. Reporting summarised from the BBC describes the lower crossing as older and draws on the knowledge of village head Wiston Miwa.^[8] These are local histories with approximate dates. The scholarly survey likewise found that confident age estimates were possible for only some bridges.^[1]

Handrails, supporting roots and additional decks can change how a bridge carries weight. The research describes a range of structural arrangements, including crossings with more than one independent span.^[1] A second deck belongs to that practical history of adjustment, alongside the shape that makes Nongriat so recognisable.

The maintenance is less photogenic and more frequent. People remove moss and other plants, prune and tie roots, lay material on the walkway and clear the approach paths. Responsibility may lie with a family, one village or several communities together.^[1] Keeping the bridge usable includes the ground on either side of it.

Khongthaw describes checking growth, adding forest compost and replacing temporary bamboo as it decays. New roots continue to be woven into a crossing after people begin using it.^[10] The work changes with the bridge. It does not end at a ceremonial opening.

The tree has an owner

In 2018, Khongthaw learned that a bridge had been lost after its tree was cut. His later account connects that loss to ownership: the tree belonged to Ba-Bli Khongthani, who had bought it decades earlier. Khongthaw arranged an agreement to transfer ownership and protect what remained.^[10] A right over a tree could determine the future of a route used by others.

The story gives conservation a more concrete form than admiration for a remarkable structure. An agreement, a landowner and the people using a crossing all become part of its survival.^[10] Teaching someone to guide roots solves one problem. Keeping permission to grow them addresses another.

Khongthaw’s wider work includes Law Kyntang, sacred groves protected by community law and oral memory. The term names the groves; it is distinct from the clan rules he describes in the same interview.^[10] Trees, customary authority and responsibility for shared places belong to a connected social landscape.

The local knowledge also extends beyond bridges. The landscape description submitted by India to UNESCO includes living ladders, steps and platforms, each responding to a different need.^[4] Guiding a root across water is one application of a broader practice of shaping trees. A steep path or a place to stand can ask for another form.

Crossings around Pynursla, Rangthylliang and Mawlynnong form part of that wider network.^[2] Their usefulness depends on local decisions about where people need to go. International recognition arrives within those relationships, with questions about who gets to speak for the work.

Recognition brings another kind of load

India submitted Jingkieng jri: Living Root Bridge Cultural Landscapes to UNESCO’s Tentative List in 2022. The submission describes a continuing practice of growing and tending structures across Meghalaya’s villages.^[4] A tentative listing records a proposal for possible World Heritage recognition. It is a stage in that process, rather than an inscription on the World Heritage List.

Khongthaw had objected to the approach taken toward recognition in 2019. In his account, the people raising the bridges had not been adequately involved. He argued for the authority of the communities and the knowledge already present in their customary rules.^[10] His objection concerned the process of conservation as well as its stated aim.

Tourism adds immediate pressure. A 2018 report warned that visitor numbers at popular crossings lacked adequate controls and that upkeep was needed.^[9] People who arrive to admire a bridge add weight, wear and demand for facilities. The route can become a destination before arrangements for its care catch up.

Later reporting at Nongriat describes a growing number of homestays and eateries. Local guide David Pariat observed the change as villagers found opportunities in visitor income.^[11] The benefits are real alongside the risks. A bridge can still carry schoolchildren, farmers and market traffic while serving people who have come only to photograph it.

Research Matters also records concerns about inappropriate construction materials and damage from concrete near the roots.^[6] Supporting tourism requires judgement about the living structure, beyond merely making access easier. A crossing needs room for the tree as well as for the people using it.

More lives than the people crossing

A rubber fig also belongs to a network of other organisms. Botanist Lucy Nongbri’s work in the East Khasi Hills helped record the pollinating fig wasp Platyscapa clavigera in Meghalaya. The research, discussed with Indian Institute of Science scientist Renee Borges, investigated the relationship between the fig and its pollinator.^[7] A bridge tree has a biological history that extends beyond its use as a support.

Many trees examined in that work did not flower or fruit. The researchers considered whether cultivation from cuttings might help explain this pattern.^[7] It is a question about the lives of particular plants, not evidence that all bridge trees share the same reproductive history. Keeping that question open gives the cultivation its proper complexity.

The bridges provide routes through forest habitat too. Conservation reporting describes animals using them, while scientists point to the connections between bridge protection and the surrounding ecosystem.^[11] The tree remains a habitat even when a walkway has been laid across its roots. Its branches and growing surfaces serve other lives without needing to be redesigned for them.

This is part of the appeal for researchers exploring architecture made with living plants. Growth could contribute shade and other benefits as a structure develops, but it also makes design an ongoing relationship with a changing organism.^[5] An experiment at a university in Shillong puts that long timescale into a new setting.

A staircase with a distant completion date

At North-Eastern Hill University, rubber-fig saplings were planted for a living pavilion in 2023. Reporting published the following year described a bamboo framework and a plan for roots to form a staircase. Middleton led the project with Ludwig, in collaboration with the Living Bridge Foundation.^[11] The proposed structure carried the knowledge of river crossings into a campus.

Students took part in design and construction, while the foundation monitored the plants’ growth. Khongthaw gave a maturity estimate measured in decades, with 2047 as the project’s intended horizon.^[11] These are plans recorded in a 2024 report, rather than a present-day inspection of a completed staircase. The work was still passing from one stage to another.

The risk of loss continues during that wait. Khongthaw’s account records five bridges destroyed by an early monsoon in 2022. The same year, his mentor Jalong Khomola died after a fall.^[10] A growing structure remains exposed to violent weather, and its knowledge depends on people whose lives are much shorter than the oldest crossings. Passing that knowledge onward is urgent work, even when the roots need time.

Khongthaw’s own Project 2047 also involves planting and tending bridges with younger people. His account describes schoolchildren adopting nearby crossings, learning to guide roots and recording what they observe.^[10] An eventual user may be learning the work while the structure is still growing. The long wait can also be a period of instruction.

The unfinished crossing in the researchers’ survey had already outlasted decades of work.^[1] Against that timescale, the most consequential action may be small: leaving a fragile root alone until it can be handled. Khongthaw describes waiting until roots are ready, then guiding them during the rains.^[10] The future crossing begins with that judgement, and with someone returning to check it again.