Environment & Ecology
Context: A farmer takes forward the State’s traditional practice of building root bridges and connects two areas across Umkar river in Cherrapunji.
About Root bridges:
- Locally known as ‘ jingkieng jri ’ the living Root bridges are one of Meghalaya’s most beautiful tangible heritage sites.
- These sites have recently been added to the tentative UNESCO world heritage site list.
- Some of the most popular of these living root bridges are in Nongriat, Cherrapunji, Nongbareh and other nearby locations.
- These are naturally built bridges mainly built by firstly planting two rubber trees of the Ficus elastica on either side of a river.
- It is a type of simple suspension bridge formed by the method of tree shaping to form living plant roots across a stream or river.
- These are very common in the southern part of Meghalaya grown by the Khasi and Jaintia tribes
- These bridges can also be found in the state of Nagaland.
- The earliest written record of Cherrapunji’s bridges can be found in the 1844 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
Source: The Hindu
