Umshiang Double-Decker Root Bridge

In the deep valleys below Cherrapunji, on the southern edge of the Shillong Plateau, the Khasi people do not build their bridges so much as grow them. The Umshiang Double-Decker at Nongriat, known locally as Jingkieng Nongriat, is the best known of them: two spans of living root, one stacked above the other, crossing the Umshiang stream in the shade of the forest. Both are made from the aerial roots of rubber fig trees (Ficus elastica) rooted on the banks, which were guided across the water, often along split and hollowed areca-palm trunks laid as a temporary guide, until they gripped the far side. Over years the roots thicken, twist around one another and fuse where they touch, and the bridge grows stronger with age rather than weaker. This one is usually said to be around two centuries old.

What makes the double-decker remarkable is less its size than its structure. Up close the deck is a mat of roots worn smooth by feet and packed with stones, the handrails are roots too, and the whole thing looks less like engineering than like the forest has decided to reach across the stream. Because it is alive, it never quite stops changing: new roots drop from the trees and must be trained in or pruned away, and a bridge left without care can grow wild and become impassable. No one knows when the tradition began. Khasi lore tells of ancestors who came down from heaven on a living ladder of roots, and the first written description of the root bridges around Cherrapunji dates from 1844, when Henry Yule recorded his astonishment at them in the journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In the late 2010s researchers mapped some 75 living bridges across the region, from single strands to double spans.

Nongriat is a small village deep in the valley, and the setting is part of the experience: dense subtropical forest, a clear stream running over boulders beneath the bridge, and other root bridges along the path, including a hybrid of root and steel wire. About an hour further on is Rainbow Falls, named for the rainbows that form in its spray, with turquoise pools at its foot. Heavy visitor numbers have taken a toll on the double-decker's health, and a replica has been made to show the craft, but the original remains in use by the village, which is the point: these are working paths, built and tended by the people who walk them.

Getting there

The bridge lies in East Khasi Hills district, about 9 kilometres from the town of Shella and below Cherrapunji (Sohra). The trail starts at the village of Tyrna, from where a descent of roughly 3,500 stone steps leads down to Nongriat; the climb back up is the hard part. The closest airport as the crow flies is Osmani International in Sylhet, Bangladesh (ZYL), across the border; the practical Indian airport is Shillong Airport (SHL), about 59 kilometres away, with Cherrapunji reached from Shillong by road.