Living Root Bridge, Riwai Village,Shillong-Meghalaya

Living Root Bridge, Riwai Village,Shillong-Meghalaya

A living root bridge is a type of simple suspension bridge formed of living plant roots by tree shaping. They are common in the North-Eastern part of the Indian state of Meghalaya. They are handmade from the aerial roots of rubber fig trees (Ficus elastica) by the Khasi and Jaiñtia peoples of the mountainous terrain along the southern part of the Shillong Plateau. Most of the bridges grow on steep slopes of subtropical moist broadleaf forest between 50 and 1,150 m (160 and 3,770 ft) above sea level.

As long as the tree from which it is formed remains healthy, the roots in the bridge can naturally grow thick and strengthen. New roots can grow throughout the tree’s life and must be pruned or manipulated to strengthen the bridge. Once mature, some bridges can have as many as 50 or more people crossing, and have a lifespan of several hundred years. Without active care, many bridges have decayed or grown wild, becoming unusable. Written documentation of living root bridges was sparse until the 2010s, but in 2017, researchers geo-located a total of 75 living root bridges.

Living root bridges have also been created in the Indian state of Nagaland, in Indonesia at Jembatan akar on the island of Sumatra, and in the Banten province of Java, by the Baduy people.

History
The Khasi people do not know when or how the tradition of living root bridges started. In Khasi mythology, their ancestors descended from a living roots ladder that connected heaven and earth, jingkieng ksiar. Historically, the earliest written record of Sohra’s (Cherrapunji’s) living root bridges is by Henry Yule, who expressed astonishment about them in the 1844 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.