Once again, I found myself descending into a steep gorge. Once again, the sound of a stony river below rose through the jungle towards me. Once again, I longed for the simple luxury of level ground.
That morning, the headman of Wahkhen’s brother had informed me that he knew of at least one living root bridge on the village’s land that I hadn’t crossed the day before.
“It’s not a big one. It’s nice, but not so amazing. It’s not far from here,” the headman’s brother informed me over a meal of cold white rice and blood sausage (a local delicacy). “Maybe one hour there, two hours back.” He then called up his nephew Shootingstar and assigned him to guide me there.
Surprisingly, I found that I kind of enjoyed the blood sausage…though maybe I was just going crazy from trekking too long. It wasn’t an especially filling meal, but since the bridge was “not far,” this didn’t worry me. I’d be back in Wahkhen soon enough.
The heart of the practice of creating living architecture in the Khasi Hills can be found in the narrow strip of rugged sloping terrain between the Umrew River and the limestone tableland around Pynursla. I can say with confidence that more documented examples of root bridges exist within this miniscule patch of territory than in all the rest of the world combined, including the other parts of the Khasi Hills.
That said, the borders of the Root Bridge Capitol of the World are yet to be clearly defined. Certain villages, chief among them being Nongblai, Shutim, Rangthylliang, Lyndem, and Mawkyrnot, are well-known to be unusually rich in living architecture. But which settlement truly has the most root bridges, or the most interesting examples, is an issue that’s far from settled. Why it should be this particular slope of the Khasi Hills that is so heavily planted with living architecture is likewise a question that remains, as of the time of writing, unanswered. I suspect it will only be after decades of work by specialists that anyone will be able to construct a genuinely workable theory.
But there was a small piece of the puzzle which I thought I had a chance of putting into place that morning. By investigating the jungle around Wahkhen, I might be able to determine if the village should be considered a part of the Root Bridge Capitol of the World.
Shootingstar and I had descended at least 500 meters. The walls of the dark, cool, gorge were rapidly closing in. But the stream we were fast approaching was no mere trickle, but rather a significant river with a wide boulder-strewn bed. It was a major tributary of the Umrew, one which had carved the whole landscape south of Wahkhen. The “nice, but not so amazing,” root bridge could not possibly cross such a large stream.
I assumed that a metal span would lead over the river, and the living bridge would likely be on a minor stream in the jungle somewhere up ahead. That meant there was probably a bit of climbing to do on the other side of the river, even before we turned around and began the brutal ascent back into Wahkhen. “One hour there and two hours back” was starting to sound a bit optimistic.
For the first time in my life, I wished I had eaten more blood sausage.
The stone trail led us down the final, near-vertical, slope above the riverbed.
“Jingkieng Jri,” said Shootingstar, blankly.
“What?”
“Living bridge is there.”
He pointed down the trail.
There was indeed a living root bridge across the river, and it most certainly wasn’t merely “nice, but not so very amazing.” It was among the most impressive examples I’ve ever laid eyes on, and I wondered immediately why the headman’s brother had been so dismissive of it.
The root bridge was about 45 meters long, making it significantly above average. It consisted of three consecutive spans, each of which would on their own constitute respectable living bridges. Two great and venerable ficus elastica trees grew on either side of the river, propped up high on large boulders. Both trees were affixed to the slope of the valley behind them by thick, ancient strands of rubber roots. Separate spans led from the opposite sides of the valley, reaching towards the trees on the boulders, and then the middle, lengthiest, span was strung between the two ficus elastica plants themselves. From the center span an assortment of thin vines and green leaves hung wildly down about eight meters to the pools of the river below.
The living structure appeared to have lived a tumultuous existence. The roots that made up the central span were thin, and new, while the thick old roots of the two trees came to an end above the middle of the river. Some of these venerable strands were still rigid, even as they terminated abruptly mid-air, looking exactly like sometime, perhaps not even that long ago, they had been snapped off. What was strung between the severed roots was a vastly newer generation of growth.
This difference in the ages of the middle and outer spans was noticeable even as Shootingstar and I crossed the bridge. The solid northern span might as well have been made of concrete, but the moment we went out on the middle of the bridge, the structure felt wobbly and elastic. Newer railings had been generated from recent areal roots, though these too swayed when we held them. But then, upon crossing to the southern tree, the bridge again became inflexible.
It looked like the middle part of the bridge had been compromised at some point, in a landslide, a flood, or a combination of the two. But even with the middle span knocked out, the two trees remained alive and healthy, and so were used to re-generate the bridge.
This raises another interesting question: how many living root bridges currently standing are actually the reincarnations of much older structures that were knocked down and then re-grown? Could it be that there are ficus elastica trees in the Khasi Hills that have generated a succession of architectural structures over many centuries?
I went downstream to get the full view of the bridge, and to take some pictures of Shootingstar on it for scale (he was already posing, without my asking.) As always, the photos did not do the incredible structure justice.
As I was doing so, it struck me that this bridge, crossing a river the name of which I still did not know, was as spectacular, if not more so, than the living bridges one sees photos of when one types “Living Root Bridge” into Google images. Yet, I’ve never found any sign of this structure’s existence online. To my knowledge, no documentation of it had ever been made, and few outsiders had ever come to visit it.
At the same time, the bridge clearly existed in a highly dynamic environment. Any number of factors, from natural calamities to accidental fires, might lead to its destruction in the coming years. It makes one contemplate how many things that might have been wonders of the world disappeared without a trace before anybody noticed them.
By this point I was in a fine mood, even if there was a huge trek back up to Wahkhen ahead. The day was already a stunning success. The “nice, but not so amazing” root bridge had turned out to be the most significant living architecture discovery I’d made so far on my long trek from Ranikor. That I was tired and hungry had been pushed to the back of my mind.
Then Shootingstar had a suggestion.
“Shortcut?” said he, pointing up the river as the two of us rested on the span of the bridge.
“You mean, there’s a faster way to get back to Wahkhen?”
“Yes.” He again pointed upstream. “Go up the rocks.”
“Are there any root bridges that way?”
“No, just a river.”
“But if we go that way we’ll get back to Wahkhen sooner?”
“Yes.”
“Alright,” said I. “Lead on.”
We departed from the bridge, the trail, and the tidy, cultivated, jungle nearby. Now we pushed upstream through the wild gorge. Still in high spirits, I hopped easily from boulder to boulder. But Shootingstar was already far up ahead, and far up ahead he would remain.
There must be vanishingly few people in the world in better condition than Khasi teenagers. Shootingstar, who was 17 years old, flew from rock to rock, around giant boulders, and straight up faces of sheer stone. I would see him above the obstacles that were in front of me, suddenly leaping up into view as he bounded atop the stones, and just as suddenly disappearing as he leapt down from them, only to reemerge further upstream. Through rocky hollows between limestone boulders, up over high peaks of river-polished conglomerates and vertical canyon walls of granite, he rambled effortlessly. There was no hope of keeping up with him. When presented with an obstacle he needed to descend, he would simply slide down it on his rear. He would jump huge gaps and land with all his weight on his feet. Sometimes he would recklessly scramble straight up high rock walls, only to find in mid ascent that it was impossible to get any further, whereupon he would leap back down. If I was foolish enough to attempt to follow his example, I’d likely destroy my knees…or worse.
He was soon out of sight.
The bottoms of the canyons of the Khasi Hills are beautiful, fascinating, places. And the best way to see them is to do what Shootingstar and I were doing: to traverse the gorges jump by jump, stone by stone. There are locations deep within the canyons that can only be experienced this way, and they are well worth seeking out. When you’ve had plenty to eat, are well rested, full of energy, and have lots of time, exploring the floors of the canyons of the Khasi Hills is one of the most enjoyable things you can do in Meghalaya.
I had had a small bowl of cold rice and blood sausage for breakfast; I had been trekking for weeks; I’d been running on Nescafe since Sohra. It occurred to me that returning to Wahkhen this way, despite how undeniably grand the surroundings were, was an unnecessarily dangerous course of action. It might have been a shortcut for Shootingstar, but I wasn’t made of the same stuff he was. What few calories I had in storage were burning away with every boulder I had to find my way around. This wasn’t a good idea.
But I had agreed to it.
As I clambered over a great rock, I saw Shootingstar sitting next to a pool up ahead. He looked like he’d been there for a while.
“Are we going to reach a trail back to Wahkhen soon?” I called out to him, doing my best not to show that I was getting hungrier by the minute.
“Ah, yes,” said he.
“In how long?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s not too bad.”
Like the trails of the southern Khasi Hills, the area’s rivers often resemble giant stairways. The higher in altitude they reach, the steeper their courses become. Now with Shootingstar again far up ahead, I came to a place where the river passed through a narrow cataract, the stream compressed into a few white torrents as its bed rose several meters. The way forward was a choice between climbing directly up the sides of house-sized boulders or dipping into the rushing water in the chambers between the rocks and hoping that there might be some way to climb up between the stones. Both options were risky.
From a distance, I had seen how Shootingstar had navigated the obstacle: he just sauntered straight up the rocks. Now that I was right up next to them, I had no idea how he had accomplished this.
And so I devised a cowardly, time-consuming, way forward: I climbed up into the sloping jungle to the south of the river, and then back down to the bed upstream from the obstacle.
Maneuvering around the step in the river took a fair bit of energy out of me, but I was consoled with the fact that the trail Shootingstar said would lead back up to Wahkhen must have been only a few minutes ahead.
Worryingly, I had fallen even further behind my guide. It occurred to me that Shootingstar could very easily abandon me there. But if that were to happen, I’d simply backtrack; the way up had been steep, but not quite steep enough that I wouldn’t be able to get back down to the root bridge and return to Wahkhen via the trail if I had to.
For a long while, well over ten minutes, there was no sign of my guide. Then the walls of the valley contracted once more, and I again saw Shootingstar upstream sitting serenely on a rock next to a pool.
I came up to him, whereupon he pointed into a shadowy section of the canyon ahead, to something that should not have been there.
“Jingkieng Jri,” said he.
I looked to where he was pointing, and saw that there was, indeed, a large root bridge in that direction, stretching from rock wall to rock wall. The structure was wild and tangled, its span covered in creepers and ferns, with a curtain of thin young areal roots that hung down to the river.
Seeing this filled me with an uneasy mixture of feelings. This structure had almost certainly never been documented. It probably had never even been visited by an outsider. It was just too hard to reach. And yet, here in the middle of nowhere was a true wonder of living architecture. It was exactly the sort of thing the whole great trek was about.
But according to Shootingstar, there shouldn’t have been any more root bridges on the river. Perhaps the span ahead was part of a trail that led back to Wahkhen?
“Have we reached the path?” I asked.
Shootingstar did not answer. Instead, he climbed up out of the riverbed and stomped into the undergrowth to the north, investigating whether there was a significant path leading from the bridge in that direction.
“Eh, no,” he said after a little while.
“Then, how much further do we have to go up the river?”
“Ten minutes.”
Uh oh.
“You said ten minutes an hour ago!”
“So…maybe half an hour?”
“Should we just go back?”
“No. The path is close.”
We pressed on up the gorge, which only grew steeper and narrower. There was many a hard scramble and difficult maneuver over and around boulders. Each of these left me increasingly tired and hungry. It turns out a few spoonfuls of blood sausage and a modest lump of cold white rice isn’t enough to sustain a person through an honest day’s adventure.
“Have you been this way before?!” I called to Shootingstar, who was again nearly out of my sight. At this he stopped for a moment, stood thoughtfully, and then silently pushed on.
I hadn’t clapped eyes on Shootingstar for a long time, and I was only slowing further as my energy bled away and the terrain became increasingly difficult. Ahead, there was another choke point. A wall of huge black rocks stood across the river, the stream pouring through them in white cascades.
I tried to find a way along a rocky shelf on the northern side of the gorge, but only wound up trapped under a stone overhang. Then I fell back and stood looking up at the jumble of huge boulders in my path, contemplating if I shouldn’t just turn around. I’d feel bad for abandoning Shootingstar, but it was really starting to feel like he didn’t know where he was going.
Then again, I hadn’t seen him in half an hour. Maybe he was deliberately trying to leave me behind because I was so damn slow.
And then Shootingstar’s teenage head popped into view over the edge of the wall of boulders.
“How did you get up there!?” I called out.
“It is very easy.”
“But how?”
He pointed off to the south, to a high slope of rubble and pulverized rock. This was a recent landslide, only just beginning to be recolonized by undergrowth. Shootingstar had climbed up onto this, and then back down to the riverbed. It never would have occurred to me to go that way.
“Listen,” I called up to him. “How long until we reach the path to Wahkhen? I don’t have any food with me. Would it be faster just to go back the way we came?”
“No, the path is here only!” Shootingstar called back, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb and sounding quite confident. Then he turned around and disappeared up the river.
I soon discovered that the land to the south of the obstacle was a nearly vertical mess of sliding rock fragments only interrupted by the occasional thorn bush. The stones were all of the perfect size and instability to twist an ankle on. Making matters worse, on my left the slope became too steep to climb down without triggering a rockslide. To my immense discomfort, I realized that the same could be said of the way I had already come.
The only thing to do was to keep climbing and hope for the best.
“This is the worst shortcut ever,” thought I.
I found myself scrambling higher and higher, not knowing if I would come to a point where the steepness of the unstable slope would increase just a tiny fraction and leave me stranded on the side of the valley, unable to climb or descend.
Looking down to the riverbed, I could see Shootingstar pushing upstream, far ahead. I wouldn’t be where he was for a long time…if I made it back down to the river at all.
“Shootingstar!” I called out, the name echoing through the valley.
He kept on walking.
“Shooootingstar!!” I cried out again.
No response.
“Shooootingstar!!!”
He stopped and turned around.
“Yes?!” he called back.
“Wait!” I yelled.
Shootingstar sat down on the bank of the river and watched me as I struggled along the shifting stones. A little higher, and I found that I could make my way slowly up the valley, cutting laterally across the slope. The undergrowth became thicker, and the ground less unstable. Gradually, I made my way down, and was glad to be back in the riverbed. That was a slope I didn’t want to have to climb again.
Out of curiosity, I went back to the obstacle across the river, and looked over, downstream. Returning to Wahkhen along the river was no longer an option. Climbing down the large boulders wasn’t going to happen, and it had been pure luck that I’d been able to navigate the scree slope. There was no way out of the canyon now but forward.
Fortunately, Shootingstar had sounded quite sure that the trail back to Wahkhen was close.
It wasn’t.
Shootingstar was far upstream. The gorge was either getting narrower, or the fact that the day was fading made it seem like the walls were closing in.
And then, ahead, I saw my guide again. He was standing on the span of yet another magnificent living root bridge, looking confused and mildly embarrassed.
Shootingstar had never been here before.
“So,” I asked as I came to the living bridge, “how long until we reach the path back to Wahkhen?”
“Eh…maybe, one hour. But I think this is not the right river. We are at the Nongblai river.”
To this day, I’m not sure how this happened.
“So…now what do we do?”
Shootingstar again pointed back over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Keep going.”
We spent a few minutes at the unexpected root bridge. It was lengthier than the previous one, but also thinner and more recent. The bridge hung from rock wall to rock wall in a tight section of the gorge, with the river rushing beneath it even in the dry season. Next to it was a small metal sign which Shootingstar explained to me warned that the span was not to be cut or damaged in any way, by orders of the Nongblai village council. It seemed, then, that the previous two examples had also been grown not by Wahkhen, but by Nongblai. My guess is that the “nice, but not very amazing,” root bridge that Shootingstar had been instructed to guide me to was somewhere else entirely.
Even with my irritation and anxiety building with every minute, I could not help but note just how otherworldly this remote living bridge was. It was manmade, created long ago to solve a simple problem, and yet here it was, in the middle of nowhere, alive, and wild, and growing. And it was a structure which, I feel relatively certain, had never been visited by an outsider up until that point, an achievement which gave me a tiny morsel of solace in an increasingly unpleasant situation. I just hoped I’d live to tell about it.
Then I had an idea. Shouldn’t the path the bridge serviced lead us to Nongblai? If we could get to that village, it would be possible for us to eventually make our way back to Wahkhen, or, if it was too late, spend a night and return the next morning.
The two of us went over to the south side of the bridge, hoping for a clear trail. There was none, only a steep trackless waste of rocks and undergrowth. The living root bridge was probably used only by a few people, perhaps a single family. They likely knew the way to and from it like the backs of their hands, but Shootingstar would be nearly as lost as I would be if we tried to force our way through the unfamiliar jungle slopes to Nongblai.
There was only one path for us, and it led upstream.
Now I was mentally preparing to spend the night in the jungle without food or shelter. It was an infuriating irony that I had trekked for weeks with a massively heavy bag filled with gear and provisions; that I had schlepped it over mountains and rivers and across a vast swath of the Khasi world, but now, when it looked like I very well might be presented with a genuine emergency, the giant pack full of food and camping gear was sitting uselessly next to bags of old rice in a storeroom 1000 meters above.
It was sorely tempting to lose it at Shootingstar. This “shortcut” was a terrible idea. But throwing a temper tantrum wouldn’t help. It was increasingly looking like the two of us might be spending a good long time with each other, hungry in the dark at the bottom of a canyon. The last thing I needed to do was piss Shootingstar off if I wanted to get out of this.
Anyway, he was just as lost as I was. Now he was going more slowly. Maybe he was getting tired, or maybe he just felt sorry for me.
Then I heard a familiar sound. We rounded a bend.
“Waterfall” said Shootingstar, blankly.
In front of us, the Nongblai river fell in two narrow ribbons of thundering white water into a deep bitterly cold plunge pool at the bottom of a crevasse of wet slippery rock. The pool extended from wall to wall, while the marbled stone of the canyon rose high above. The air in the corridor was bracingly cool. This was a beautiful spot, again, just the sort that I had trekked across Meghalaya to visit. But a person tends to see beautiful places in a rather different light when they pose a threat.
We weren’t going any further upstream.
“I think we must go back,” said Shootingstar.
“How?”
“I will find a way.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him.
Now we were both exhausted. We started back down, slipping and sliding over boulders, stumbling through pools, the light fading by the minute. Sunset may still have been a few hours off, but it was overcast, and the clouds were building. Hard rain would be a disaster.
By this point I had little hope of returning to Wahkhen before nightfall. Shootingstar, however, might be able to. Perhaps the thing to do was to send him ahead and then crawl under some boulder or stony overhang and wait for his return, or the next morning’s sunrise. If getting back to Wahkhen that evening was not going to happen, stumbling around in the bottom of the gorge as night fell would just be a waste of calories.
Still, I didn’t have any food. I considered fishing a freshwater crab or two out of the river using my shirt as an ersatz net, though I’d have no means of cooking them, and the crabs in the area are known to frequently carry parasites. Maybe I could have scrounged up an underripe Jackfruit. At least all that Survivorman I had watched in my youth would finally come in handy.
(Aside: From that day on, I vowed that I would always bring matches or a lighter with me, even on the tamest of day hikes).
“Yes, here is a way,” said Shootingstar.
“A way?” said I, roused out of an exhausted funk.
Shootingstar pointed to some bushes on the northern bank of the river.
“Where?” I asked.
“You see, we can go that way.” He pointed again, into the same clump of bushes. I now saw that these were growing where a very faint watercourse emptied into the river.
“Is this another shortcut?”
“Eh…no.”
“How long will it take to get back to Wahkhen?”
“Three or five hours.”
This was a crushing figure.
“Are you sure, really sure, that this will get us back?”
“Yes. We can’t go back by the river,” Shootingstar added. “That way is…not possible.”
Shootingstar was going to take the barely visible path whether I followed him or not. My choice was to go with him and risk another bit of dangerously faulty navigation, or just stay in the riverbed overnight and hope someone found me the next day.
I opted to stick with Shootingstar, though I had my reservations.
We left the Nongblai River and scrambled up and up and up along the faint watercourse. The rocks were wet, the ground unstable, and the slope was only getting steeper. Shootingstar was soon well out ahead. Then we went from scrambling to climbing up the little rill, using our hands as much as our legs as we pushed ever upwards over loose, muddy stones.
As the afternoon wore on into a murky grey evening, the river fell away steeply below…too steeply. Then I realized we had just ascended and unstable wall of stone that I didn’t know if I could get back down again. I also didn’t know if we’d be able to get up much further. We might have just traded spending the night in the riverbed for spending it on a jungle slope.
I came panting and scrambling up over an outcropping of slimy algae and mud-covered rocks. Ahead, Shootingstar was sitting calmly on a stone having some kwai. He had his back to the slope behind him, looking totally content and relaxed.
I was just about ready to snap.
“Here is the path,” said he without the slightest trace of relief or emotion.
And, indeed, there was a trail…a narrow one, but a veritable four-lane highway compared with what we had been following.
“This is the way to Wahkhen,” he said. “I think it is only one hour.”
Shootingstar had steered me right. The trek back to Wahkhen was no easy stroll, but we returned soon and safely enough. We’d survived.
Though the headman’s brother had instructed me to pay him, my guide wouldn’t take any money. As we got closer to Wahkhen, he started walking quicker, and as we entered the village, I noticed that he was taking an odd, furtive, back route into the settlement.
It seemed that Shootingstar was embarrassed by the whole thing, and maybe thought he was going to get in trouble. He had, after all, nearly killed a Phareng. When the two of us chanced to bump into the headman’s brother, Shootingstar just kind of looked at me with a sheepish, guilty, expression, and then quietly slunk off.
I suppose I could have told the headman’s brother just how dodgy the day had turned out. But that would have been pointless. I doubt Shootingstar will ever repeat the mistake. And, anyway, because of my guide’s faulty navigation I could lay a pretty fair claim to being one of the first outsiders to have clapped eyes on some of the most spectacular living architecture in existence.
I met Shootingstar again a little while later, and though he still wouldn’t accept the payment the headman’s brother had instructed me to give to him, he did take some imported American Beef Jerky I offered. He seemed to find the foreign preserved meat quite interesting, if not especially tasty.
Vast unnecessary risks aside, it had been a solid day’s work.
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Patrick Rogers 