- Where
- East Khasi & Jaintia Hills,
Meghalaya, northeast India - Coordinates
- 25.25° N
91.71° E (Nongriat) - Biome
- Subtropical monsoon forest —
Earth's rainiest inhabited region - The bridges
- Many years to train ·
stronger with age - Status
- UNESCO tentative list 2022;
nominated January 2026 - Best visited
- October–May, after the
monsoon and before the next
Rained the entire time, which I was told is normal. Anything made of planks had gone soft and green, so here the bridge is grown instead, and I walked over one that was still alive under my feet. It held me the way grandparents hold things: firmly, with amusement. Somewhere near here, someone has started a bridge they will never get to cross.
The short answer
The living root bridges of Meghalaya, in northeast India, are bridges grown rather than built. Using a technique the Khasi call jingkieng jri, the Khasi and Jaintia peoples guide the aerial roots of the rubber fig, Ficus elastica, across streams — traditionally through hollowed betel-palm trunks that act as channels — until the roots anchor on the far bank, thicken, and fuse into a load-bearing crossing. A bridge takes many years to become functional, can carry dozens of people, and — unlike everything else humans make — gets stronger with age. The tradition joined India's UNESCO World Heritage tentative list in 2022.
Why it's worth knowing
Every other structure on Earth begins dying the day it is finished. These begin living. The logic is native to the place: the Khasi hills catch the full force of the monsoon — the nearby village of Mawsynram holds a contested claim to be the wettest inhabited place on the planet, on a long-term average of about 11,871 millimetres a year, a title it trades with Sohra a few kilometres away — and in that climate, timber rots, bamboo fails, steel corrodes, and concrete washes out. A living root does none of these things. It repairs its own damage, grips harder as it ages, and drinks the very floods that destroy its rivals.
That long patience is the real wonder. Training a bridge is intergenerational work — knowledge of which roots to guide, when to weave, how to coax the joins held and handed down within villages, in Khasi society, which is matrilineal — property and clan identity pass through the female line, and the youngest daughter customarily inherits the family home. The 2022 UNESCO submission, covering roughly seventy villages, called the practice a convergence of culture and nature without parallel — which is the formal way of saying: nobody else on Earth does this.
The field notes
Three and a half thousand steps down
The most famous bridge is the double-decker at Nongriat, near Sohra (Cherrapunji): two living spans stacked one above the other across the Umshiang stream, grown from a single fig. Reaching it is a pilgrimage — roughly 3,500 stone steps descending from the roadhead at Tyrna village into the humid green of the gorge, past betel palms and butterflies, with the return climb as the price of admission. Crowds at the double-decker can now exceed a thousand people on peak days; go early, and spend for the village homestays that make conservation pay better than day-tripping.
How you grow a bridge
The method is elegantly simple and impossibly slow. A betel-palm trunk is split and hollowed into a trough, laid across the stream, and a young fig root is fed into it — guided, protected, and kept moist inside its channel until it reaches soil on the far side and takes hold. Then more roots follow, woven through and around the first, handrails trained at hip height, gaps floored with stone and root alike. The scaffold rots away; the bridge it shaped does not. Some crossings in these hills are believed to have carried feet for centuries, and a well-kept root bridge is credited with a working life of several hundred years — on oral tradition rather than a dated record, since no bridge here carries a documented construction date.
A canyon country made for walking
The bridges are the headline of a landscape that deserves the whole visit: the southern edge of the Meghalaya plateau falls toward Bangladesh in a staircase of gorges, waterfalls and crystal plunge pools — including the blue plunge pools at Rainbow Falls, an hour's walk beyond the double-decker, and the tiered drop of Wei Sawdong on the Sohra side. Single-span root bridges, quieter and older-feeling than the famous one, cross streams throughout the East Khasi and Jaintia Hills, many reachable through villages like Mawlynnong — a place that markets itself, with some evidence, as the cleanest village in Asia.
Sohra from above, on the Khasi hills plateau, May 2023.
Photograph: Wann Majaw · CC0
The double-decker bridge at Nongriat: two living spans stacked one above the other, October 2018.
Photograph: Wann Majaw · CC0
Rubber fig roots, guided across the water into a walkway, January 2026.
Photograph: Joydeep Chakraborty · CC BY-SA 4.0 · cropped
Stone steps down into the forested valley at Sohra; the walk to the double-decker is roughly 3,500 of them, July 2026.
Photograph: Jyoti Chiring · CC BY 4.0
Monsoon waterfalls pouring off the cliffs at Cherrapunji, July 2013.
Photograph: JakilDedhia · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Cross slowly, and thank the tree at both ends.
- Sleep in the village, and treat the bridges as the village's own, which they are: cross as a guest, and pay whatever is asked.
- Go down the steps slowly and come up slower. (My knees have written a list of their own. It is shorter than mine and entirely about stopping.)
- Find a young root in its cradle and wish it a long career.
- Swim below a waterfall the colour of bottled sky.
A split betel-palm trunk, hollowed into a trough, cradling a pencil-thin fig root above the stream. It is the whole method in one object: the scaffold is temporary, the root is forever, and someone laid this one knowing they were building a bridge for people not yet born.
Tally, in the marginSomebody built this for a bridge they will never cross. I sat with that for a while, then wrote it down twice.
Getting there
The gateway is Shillong, Meghalaya's capital, about three hours by road from Guwahati airport in neighbouring Assam; Sohra (Cherrapunji) is roughly two hours further, and the double-decker trek begins at Tyrna village, a short drive beyond. The descent is about 3,500 steps each way — steep, humid and entirely worth it — with homestays in Nongriat for those wise enough to sleep beside the bridge and meet it before the day-trippers arrive. October to May is the season; the monsoon months are spectacular and hazardous underfoot. No permits are required for Meghalaya.
Shillong, 2026 (checked 4 October 2026). EastMojo reported that a Khasi Students' Union rally in Shillong on 19 August 2026 turned violent, and United News of India reported that vehicles from outside the state, tourist taxis among them, were attacked. Meghalaya's deputy chief minister, Prestone Tynsong, said at the end of August that law and order had returned to normal. Check local news before you travel through Shillong.
Etiquette matters on living infrastructure: cross gently, keep to the trodden line, never carve or pull at roots, and pay the small village maintenance fees without grumbling — they are the bridge's gardeners' wages. The structure underfoot is alive, older than its oldest user, and still getting stronger.
Mark this place
Common questions
What are the living root bridges of Meghalaya?
The living root bridges of Meghalaya, India, are functional bridges grown by the Khasi and Jaintia peoples by training the aerial roots of the rubber fig tree, Ficus elastica, across streams - a technique called jingkieng jri. Each takes many years to become usable, and unlike built structures they strengthen with age.
How long does a living root bridge take to grow?
A living root bridge in Meghalaya takes roughly 15 to 30 years of training before it can be crossed, as fig roots are guided through hollowed betel-palm trunks to the far bank, anchored, and woven thick. A maintained root bridge is credited with a working life of several hundred years, on oral tradition rather than a documented construction date, and the bridges carry more weight as they mature.
Where is the double-decker root bridge and how do you reach it?
The famous double-decker living root bridge crosses the Umshiang stream at Nongriat village near Sohra (Cherrapunji) in Meghalaya, India. It is reached on foot by descending roughly 3,500 stone steps from the roadhead at Tyrna village; many visitors overnight in Nongriat homestays to see the bridge without crowds.
Why did the Khasi people grow bridges instead of building them?
The Khasi hills of Meghalaya endure the heaviest rainfall of any inhabited region on Earth - the village of Mawsynram claims to be the world's wettest on a long-term average of about 11,871 millimetres a year, a title it trades with neighbouring Sohra - and in that climate timber rots and conventional bridges fail. A living root bridge repairs itself, grips harder as it ages, and survives the floods that destroy built structures.
Are the living root bridges a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
The living root bridges - as the jingkieng jri cultural tradition of Meghalaya, covering roughly seventy villages - were added to India's UNESCO World Heritage tentative list in 2022, the formal first step toward full inscription, and India submitted a nomination in January 2026; the site is not yet inscribed. The submission describes an intergenerational system of nature-based engineering without parallel anywhere in the world.
When is the best time to visit the root bridges of Meghalaya?
October to May is the best window for the living root bridges, after the monsoon has ended and before the next begins: the forests are green, the waterfalls full, and the stone stairways safe. During the monsoon itself - roughly June to September - Meghalaya's record-breaking rainfall makes the steep treks hazardous.