The living root bridge village — 3,000 steps down into the Meghalaya gorge to reach bridges grown from rubber tree roots, a waterfall swimming hole, and a village above the clouds
Nongriat is a Khasi village in the East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya — at the bottom of a 3,000-step stone staircase descending 600m from the road at Tyrna (5km from Cherrapunji/Sohra), into the subtropical gorge of the Umshiang river where the Mawlynnong and Nongriat root bridge system is located. Nongriat is the destination for the Double Decker Living Root Bridge — two Ficus elastica (rubber tree) living root bridges stacked vertically in the same gorge location, the only double-decker living root bridge in the world, trained by the Khasi people over 400+ years by guiding the aerial r…
The Khasi people (an Austroasiatic indigenous ethnic group of Meghalaya, speaking a Mon-Khmer language closely related to Vietnamese and Cambodian rather than to the Indo-Aryan or Dravidian languages of the surrounding Indian states) have inhabited the Meghalaya plateau and its gorges for at least several thousand years. The Khasi are a matrilineal society — property and family lineage pass through the female line; the youngest daughter inherits the family property and the family name, and the husband moves into the wife's family home. The living root bridge tradition was first documented by…