I never did reach Mawlat. Didn’t even get close. Rita had been quite right to warn me that it was much too far to walk that evening. Google Maps had once again led me astray, misplacing Mawlat by several kilometers, though why I was still putting any stock in the seemingly random names on the program’s satellite imagery this late in the trek is beyond me.
Instead, at nightfall I stumbled in amongst the good people of the village of Wahlakhiat. They were most surprised to see me. It turned out that their last foreign visitor was the same fellow who had passed briefly through Nongkwai a few years before…though in Wahlakhiat they were not sure if he was Canadian, English, or German. But he was a Phareng all right. Of that much they were certain.
I made some inquiries in Wahlakhiat as to whether there were root bridges in the area. The folks I met all remembered there once having been one, though their recollections were hazy, as though the root bridge was something they hadn’t thought of in years. Everyone agreed that the bridge was swept away in an exceptionally intense flood in 1988 and then never regrown, though where exactly this living bridge had been planted, or whether there was anything left of it, nobody could tell me for certain.
The walk from Wahlakhiat to the village of Lynshing the next morning was a rarity among Khasi Hills treks in that it was easy. The settlements in this part of Meghalaya are mostly situated on the crest of a long ridge between the valley of the Umsong and that of another river with the confusingly similar title of the Umshi. The sides of the ridge are brutally steep, but while the crest of the feature slants upwards in the direction of Shillong, it does so gradually. Because of this insubstantial gradient, it has been possible for engineers to build a road from the limestone tableland far to the north all the way down to Wahlakhiat. This road would be my route to Lynshing.
That day there were no giant canyons to cross. There were no endless, energy-sapping stairs, rotting suspension bridges that could fail at any moment, or dark jungles full of puzzling small paths where a wrong turn could send me into confused oblivion. Danger did not lurk around every corner and behind every tree, and the unpaved road was impossible to get lost on. As I pushed slowly north toward Lynshing, I made a conscious effort to savor the sheer pleasantness of the walk. This, I hoped, would leave me with more energy to face the trek’s last great obstacles.
As I walked north from village to village, the settlements along the ridge appeared steadily more connected to the 21st century. Traffic increased, even if it only went from perhaps one car per hour to one every fifteen minutes. The road was leading me towards Shillong, and the world beyond the canyons; that of air conditioning and mid-range hotels and stable internet connections. I’d need to turn back into the jungle soon, or else I might yield to the temptation of the soft comforts of the city.
Getting to Lynshing only took a few hours, and the village, a roadside establishment with a huge concrete community hall and a great big school, appeared entirely unexceptional. My plan had been to track down the headman and ask him if he knew anything about living architecture in the area, but this proved unnecessary. The headman learned, through the confused whispers spreading through the village, that a rare Phareng was nearby, and so he came to intercept me.
Before I had even stopped walking, I found myself in the company of a man by the name of Rothell who it turned out was not only the headman of Lynshing but was also a school principal and an important local political leader who possessed a wide network of contacts stretching from Pynursla to Jarain.
“But why did you come here?” he asked me in an almost accusative tone as the two of us sat down to have tea at a local shop. “There are no tourist spots here. Only one foreigner has come this way in years.”
“Yes, I heard he was a Canadian…”
“Danish!” Rothell interrupted.
“Danish?”
“Definitely Danish.”
“Wow. Anyway, I came because I have a friend in Burma village…”
“Where?”
“Burma.”
“That is another country.”
“No…Burma village.”
“Near Pongtung? That Burma village?”
“Yeah, I have a friend there who said…”
“You went to Burma village?”
“Yes, and I have a friend there who said…”
“Why did you go there? There are no tourist spots there!”
“Well, it’s a really nice place. But, my friend in Burma said that in Lynshing there are living root bridges…”
“For that you must go to Nongriat. There you can find the Double Decker Root Bridge. That is the tourist spot. I think you want to go there.”
“I’ve gone there many times.”
“You have seen that living bridge?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“Well, I’ve been walking from Ranikor to…”
“Ranikor? In West Khasi Hills?”
“Yes, I’ve been walking from there to…”
“From Ranikor? Only walking?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you do that?”
“It seemed like the best way to see the Khasi Hills.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I’m almost done. My idea was to walk across the whole Khasi speaking part of southern Meghalaya…”
“Then why did you come here?” Rothell asked, just as brusquely as before.
“My friend from Burma village, his relative said that there are living root bridges here in Lynshing.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Well, that was disappointing.
“Are you sure?” I pressed.
“I cannot say with total certainty. But I don’t think there are. I have not seen them personally. If you have come all this way to Lynshing to see a living root bridge, and then there are none, what will you do?”
“Move on. I’m headed towards Jarain.”
“But it is getting late, and to go there you must ride all the way to Shillong and then change vehicles.”
“Yes, I was wondering if I could stay in your village for a night?”
“There is no hotel here.”
“I can sleep anywhere. I have a blanket and everything I need in my backpack.”
“Oh! So that’s why you carry this,” said Rothell, pointing to the bag with great interest. “And food too?”
The two of us wound up having several more cups of tea and talking for quite some time. While Rothell at first seemed perplexed by the idea that a Phareng would want to have anything to do with his village, slowly this confusion gave way to curiosity. He was acutely interested in what life in America was like, which, inevitably, led to a long discussion of Donald Trump.
“Trump is very entertaining, and a little bit crazy!” exclaimed Rothell. “He is like a WWE wrestler. I cannot tell if he’s real or just a clown, but even if it is only just pretend, he can still, we can say, throw his opponent across the ring!” Rothell burst out laughing, his seriousness having dissipated.
This struck me as a rather apt observation of the lamentable state of American politics.
We soon went back to discussing living architecture. It turned out that Rothell did at least remember a living root bridge nearby, though it had fallen long ago.
“Do you know when?” I asked.
“It fell down, maybe, thirty years ago…around 1986…or 89…between 86 and 90, of that much I am sure.”
“1988?”
“Maybe.”
“Was it across the Umshi River? Did it fall down after a big flood?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“The people in Wahlakhiat told me about it.”
“I think it is the same one.”
Once I had settled into a backroom in Lynshing’s large community hall, Rothell summoned a younger relative of his named Anthony, who the headman thought was likely to be a good source of information about the area. This was because Anthony had been trying his best to record Lynshing’s history before it was completely forgotten…though, by his own admission, he hadn’t gotten very far in this task.
“Our problem,” said Anthony, “is that we have forgotten everything. Even with our very very old people, nobody wrote down their memory when it was fresh, so now all we have are these…these…not clear memories of the time before. What can we do? As for this Jingkieng Jri, there was once one across the Umshi that I think you have heard of. But it is gone by 1988. Then, there are others, I think. I’m not sure. But I think. But they have all gone in landslides and floods, and we don’t really do living bridges here anymore, because now there is steel and concrete. And it is a shame. There are few here who even remember these living bridges, which makes me surprised that you came here to look for them.”
As the conversation went on, Rothell made some calls to friends and relatives, asking if anyone knew of standing living bridges between Lynshing and Jarain. Apparently not. It seemed, then, that I had made an important, if rather melancholy, discovery. Here, in the valleys of the northern Umngot basin, was the fuzzy, receding, eastern boundary of the practice of Khasi living architecture.
It’s unlikely that Rothell, well connected as he was, would be unaware of a significant concentration of living architecture in the region. This isn’t to say that there are certainly no root bridges hidden within the folds of the Umsong, Umshi, or upper Umngot gorges. Quite to the contrary, it strikes me as perfectly likely that there could still be isolated examples tucked away along obscure paths deep in the jungle. But what’s certain is this: Living Architecture is not as prominent a part of the cultural landscape of the valleys to the east of Pynursla as it is to the west. In the Northern Umngot Gorge, root bridges are mostly just a memory.
While I would still make inquiries on my way to Jarain, it struck me that in Lynshing I could fairly claim to have succeeded, however anticlimactically, in one of the primary objectives of the trek. I had walked across the whole extent of the region in the southern Khasi Hills where living root bridges were common. Maybe there are more examples further east, in the Jaintia Hills, or somewhere beyond, in Assam, Nagaland, Myanmar, or some other remote corner of Asia.
But someone else is going to have to walk to those ones.
After my talk with Rothell and Anthony, it was time to string up my hammock. I again attached it to the steel-reinforcing rods that ran horizontally through the windows. This task was markedly easier without a giant legion of curious children peeking in at me. Rothell came in again after dinner, accompanied by two of his nieces. The headman was buzzed, though not to an annoying degree.
Now Rothell was confronted with my hammock, which he found strange and amazing.
“Is this for sitting?” he enquired, pointing at it.
“Sometimes.”
“You will sleep in this?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s not that bad.”
Rothell nodded approvingly.
“You take this everywhere you go?” the headman asked, pressing down on the nylon with his hands to see how strong it was.
“Yeah. It’s quite light weight, so it’s good to carry long distances.”
“Hmm, yes.”
Rothell rubbed his chin for a few moments, looking thoughtfully at the hammock.
He pointed to it again.
“May I sit?”
“Please.”
Carefully, with a look of deep concentration as though he was landing a spacecraft on the moon, Rothell brought himself down onto the hammock, the Nylon stretching as more and more of his weight was entrusted to it. The headman sank into the hammock as much as he was going to, and then, after working himself up to it for a few moments, lifted his feet off the ground and swung back and forth.
His two nieces started giggling.
“Ah! Now I see why you bring this!” Rothell laughed. “It is also a swing!” He put his feet on the ground and stopped. “May I also lay down?”
“Of course.”
“Yes, OK, now I will do this.”
It took the headman a little while to gather his courage. Then he quickly lifted his feet and turned himself so that he was laying on his back, causing the hammock to sway violently. As he swung almost from one side of the room to the other, he sank far into the material, so that only his feet were visible, sticking out to one side.
“You really sleep like this?” came Rothell’s voice from the depths of the hammock.
“Yes sir.”
Now he readjusted himself, still rocking from side to side. His head poked out. Smiling, he gazed down admiringly at the Nylon.
“Just imagine,” he said, regarding the hammock as though it were an awe-inspiring piece of futuristic technology.
Then he stretched out his arms and yawned. More giggles from his nieces.
“Very comfortable,” Rothell said.
“It’s better than sleeping on concrete.”
“Do all Americans know about these?”
“Most.”
“What do you call it? Ham….?”
“Ham-mocks.”
“Horlicks?”
“Hammocks.”
“Oh, I see. May I take a video?”
“Please, go right ahead.”
Now Rothell produced his cellphone and started recording himself as he swung from side to side. “Yes,” the headman said to his phone, “today, we are here with my good friend Patrick.” The camera was turned towards me for a second, and I waved, though I suspect all Rothell recorded was a blurry image of a Phareng going up and down.
“Patrick has come all the way from his village Delaware,” continued Rothell. “And he is walking all here and there in Meghalaya. In his country of America, they have a very special kind of bed which is called…” Rothell turned to me… “what is it called?”
“Hammock.”
“Yes, in America, they have this Hammock.” The headman then scanned the Nylon with his smartphone camera. “You see, the American is very clever, and good at invention. We Khasis, we only sleep on the floor, or in a bed, but the American sleeps above the floor and in the trees where no one can bother him. It is a fascinating way to sleep. Yes, thank you my good friend Patrick. May God bless and protect you.”
Rothell’s nieces were practically on the floor, howling with laughter.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider supporting me on my Patreon page. There, you can download an extended edition of my book The Green Unknown which includes several chapters available exclusively on Patreon, as well as access a whole slew of other perks.
Patrick Rogers 