Living tree bridges in India stand strong for hundreds of years
The entwined roots of Indian rubber trees form bridges that—unlike steel structures—grow more durable with time.
Cherrapunji, IndiaThe green hills of Meghalaya state—a high, sodden, rumpled, and stream-slashed corner of India’s remote and beautiful northeastern panhandle—can be a misery to walk.
The corrugated slopes, sheeted in mist, are clogged with jungle undergrowth and greased with mud. During the monsoon rains, foot trails between villages plunge again and again into gorges that hiss with waterfalls and fierce, impassable rivers. Navigating these natural obstacles—in a climate where 40 feet of rainwater plummets from the sky every year—requires clever toes, iron lungs, and the power of prolonged observation. It demands thousands of years of attentiveness. Lifetimes of experimentation. Generations of problem solving.
The result, courtesy of the ingenuity of the Khasi and Jaintia people who trek these paths from their
