The young Khasi conservationist who grows bridges

Morningstar Khongthaw is a Khasi conservationist from Rangthylliang village, in the Pynursla area of Meghalaya's East Khasi Hills. FactorDaily's profile, published on 29 October 2025, records that his first encounter with a root bridge came at the age of six, when his father carried him across a single root. He began, the report says, as a would-be promoter of bridge tourism, but came to see the crowds as harmful and shifted to conservation.

The bridges he works with are grown from the aerial roots of Ficus elastica, guided across gorges over bamboo scaffolding during the monsoon, when the roots are soft, and fed with forest compost. Roots fuse together as they grow, scaffolds rot and must be replaced each year, and a bridge may take fifty years or more to mature. According to the report, he has so far mapped 133 bridges in Meghalaya.

His main project, called Project 2047, aims to have bridges standing when India turns 100 in 2047. So far, the profile says, he has planted 25 saplings, works with schools, and hopes to revive sacred groves known as Law Kyntang. In 2019 he rejected a top-down heritage plan, a UNESCO tentative-list approach, because he felt it excluded the people who raise the bridges, and instead brought together elders and landowners from eight clans. He also acquired a 400-year-old fig tree that had been slated for charcoal.

The work has had setbacks. The report records that bridges have been cut down during feuds, that his team shrank from about thirty people to five, and that five bridges were lost in the monsoon of early 2022.

For a visitor, his story is a practical guide. Go with a local guide, stay on marked paths, respect limits on how many people may be on a bridge, and understand that the most photographed bridges are the most stressed. Pay local fees, and buy from the villages that look after the bridges.

We have not spoken to Morningstar Khongthaw, and his work has also been described by UNDP and other outlets, whose accounts differ in some details, such as when his campaigns began. We have used only the FactorDaily report for the facts above.