It was a cloudy monsoon afternoon, and I had been trailing my guide Bah Drong for over an hour. Despite the slight but persistent drizzle, Bah Drong marched along unfazed, his seasoned calf muscles carrying him swiftly along the rough, mountainous trail. I had to hurry to avoid falling behind. Every now and then, he turned to offer encouragement with a few words of broken English and a mouth full of betel nut seeds: “Little more!”
It would take us another full hour to find what I had come to see: a being that was both intrinsically natural and intrinsically engineered, a jing kieng jri, a living bridge made out of tree roots.The word comes from the local (phonetic) language called Khasi.
I was in the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya, which translates to “abode of the clouds.” Here, at the foot of the Himalayas lie the Garo and Khasi ranges, which endow the landscape with undulating hills, deep valleys and fast-flowing rivers. Every monsoon season, rain-laden winds sweep up from the Bay of Bengal, breaking open upon this mountainous terrain and creating what’s widely considered to be the wettest region in the world. On average, this area receives between 32 and 45 feet of rainfall a year.
These hills are home to the Khasi people, a mountain tribe that, for centuries, have made this harsh landscape its own. The residents’ primary occupation is farming, often supplemented by fishing, growing betel palm, fermenting rice beer, and distilling spirits from rice or millet. Some villages have concrete houses, but most locals prefer traditional bamboo dwellings, slightly elevated from the ground so water can flow under them. Read more from NPR.
