He Built the Tallest Treehouse in the Amazon… Now He’s Building 500 Worldwide

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Somewhere deep in the Amazon rainforest, there is a room 32 m above the ground and 11 floors up in a tree. This is jungle. You need a machete to move forward and you don't really know where you're going because everywhere looks the same. Then try to find those trees that we identified from 500 m away on the top of some other tree. Almost impossible. Actually, we identified some of the tips and then we walked around and we couldn't find the base of the tree. The New York Times called it one of the 10 best places on earth. Time magazine agreed.

[00:00:34]>> It's something that kind of fell into my head from above and it was like, "Hey, Philip, wake up. Now is the time to do more. You should do 500 tree houses in your life and you might only live for the next 10 years because it's such a dangerous job. So, make it happen."

[00:00:52]>> This man built it and this is his first interview. So if you have a treehouse in contrast to any other house, it does not cover any part of the earth. So the ground as it is can still percolate water. The root system supports an entire ecosystem. The tree is fixing carbon. You're using fixed carbon which is timber to build your house. And as you live in it, you're actually protecting that tree from what else might have happened to it, which is very often big trees are disrespected and cut down. I think it's the most carbon positive home that you could think of and I hope all the guests now enjoy having a lou with a view.

[00:01:34]>> Lou with a view.

[00:01:34]>> This is something that most people don't have at home. Lu's are always closed up and they have a door in front of you.

[00:01:40]Maybe a poster here you have just open Vanashi Farms the birds everything is there.

[00:01:46]>> I sat with him here at Vanashi Farms for over an hour and what he told me I will never forget. Philip Plinspy, treehouse builder. This is his story.

[00:01:59]>> And today we have a special guest with us. We have Philip Clinkspice. He's from the treehouse community. Welcome, Philip, to Vanashi Farms.

[00:02:07]>> Thank you again for welcoming me once more to Vanashi Farms. This place is such a beautiful farm. And I've been coming here since 11 years, actually 13 years now, since the first time we came to hang up a rope swing over one of the big uh water bodies. And it's an adventurous place. It's always full of life. And every time I come back, there's something new. So it's really a growing, happening place, I have to say.

[00:02:32]And very inspiring. Every time I leave from here, I take back with me lots of ideas and energy from you and your family and all the people you attract to who are around you to make this place so happening and productive. So my involvement here I guess it's always it started off with um this treehouse um concept because you have built a treehouse before and it's been u shown to us by some clients of yours and they they told you hey wait a minute there's some people in Orville who built high up on top of the trees. Um a lot of people ask me that when is that point when it started? It actually never started. It's always been going on and I'm not sure if it's really fully started yet. I'm looking forward to much much more. I'm still considering myself as a researcher in this department because every time there's something new to find out. I'm approaching it very much with a scientific element right now. It started off as I was a child, I always had this tendency to climb trees and explore the spaces in the branches. Um there's many things that attracted me to go up into a tree.

[00:03:41]One obvious, very obvious reason is that that's where there are a lot of tasty things growing. Fruits grow on trees and it's just the best to get a fruit that's directly ripened on a tree and enjoy that juicy flesh with all its flavor.

[00:03:57]It's completely different than having to go and buy a fruit that's been picked green and then ripen somewhere. So it gives you that ultimate experience of being able to eat a ripe fruit together with the birds and whatever other animals have already been chewing on that and get a little bit share with nature. And then I've been climbing trees also to get a view um in the place where I grew up in Orville. It's quite a flat plateau. Um and we've been doing a lot of work to create a forest for shade because it's a hot place. And the result of that is that we have bushes all around and our view is limited. So, I like to go onto the mountaintops. I like to go to the ocean where you get this expansive view that just liberates the soul and makes me happy, makes a lot of people happy. So, one easy way I found to do that was just get up a tree and enjoy the view. It's a lot of wind. You can see much further and it's really nice. I love it. um you know just loving that space up in the trees and often interacting with the trees and finding spots like a jaguar when it goes to sleep up there just hugs a branch and falls asleep and stays there the whole night. So we found branches that are just welcoming little seats up in the trees for example in cashew trees they often have undulating horizontal branches where you can just sit and even lay down and that just inspired me to spend more time there. So, I started taking some material with me or sometimes pushing branches down and creating a little kind of nest situation. We've done this with bamboos also. Inside a bamboo clump, just climb up and push all the branches together so you can have a bed of live branches. And I guess those were the beginnings, the very most simple um tree structures that I built. And then becoming a teenager, I started to experiment with local techniques, cheap and easy, accessible to everyone, sticks and ropes. And we actually built big structures where we could have sleepovers with 10, 20 people. Now, these are mostly quickly done and temporary, but they probably laid the foundation for what came way later. later on learned how to climb with a harness and um I learned how to be a tree doctor which means really study trees, understand their growth rhythms, when is the right time to cut them, how is it to remove a tree like over a house? How can you take these masses and masses of sometimes dozens of tons that are sitting way up in the air and remove them strategically and carefully to bring them down to the ground safely and was involved in the youth center in Orville creating events for people for about 10 years um dinners fairs vocational training workshops where I was trying to empower the youngsters to learn a skill and be confident that they can do something that they understand the whole scope of mechanics masonry carpentry and later on this developed into treehouse building.

[00:06:56]I guess I've built several dozen tree houses in what I consider a research phase. Um I also started to teach treehouse building or host um treehouse building sessions. Let's say I don't consider myself that I have too much to teach. I just work together with people. It's like I when I see a tree, I don't consider that I have to show the tree what this treehouse is going to be like.

[00:07:22]It's not like a top- down approach, but it's more when I see a tree, I try to humble myself according to this majestic big old wise being that's there and try to understand what is it offering and how can I just participate in that offering of spaces and make the best out of it so that we have a tree human interaction that's possible.

[00:07:45]>> We are lucky to have number one treehouse of the 500 dream project that you have. Um tell us a bit about how you uh thought about this 500 project. I I think you were in Brazil or something before you coming here.

[00:08:00]>> Um so tell us about that dream of 500 project and uh the first one here and subsequently the following tree houses.

[00:08:08]>> Yeah. So the 500 treehouse project a lot of questions about that. Um why 500 tree houses? Um when did it start? And this is number one. Is this the first treehouse you built? No, it's not. In fact, I've been, like I said, building them since I was a a child. Um, during those 10 years when I was taking care of the youth center, we built a bunch of tree houses there, probably two dozen to accommodate travelers and volunteers quickly. Most of them were very simple, um, built with with simple methods and recycled materials.

[00:08:40]Um, then I got an opportunity to go to Brazil for a sustainability conference in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. was the Rio plus 20 organized by the United Nations and it was supposed to bring the globe into a new perspective of sustainable goals that can be achieved. So when I reached there I realized it's all just a political financial game that's going on. All the presidents that are coming there, all the companies that are pitching their new plastic free products, they're just as bad as as what they was before.

[00:09:13]And I went there with this um idea to learn from the Brazilians who I considered tribal people about how they build tree houses. Now I've been building them in India for a long time and I've met tribals from different parts of India and seen what they do with their natural materials and how they work with trees. For example, in Bundipur there's a culture of making machans. So each field has a little platform and they use it to guard their crops. When the crops are ripe, there will always be someone up there safe from the wildlife that's down, safe from the snakes and all the other things. But if there's an elephant or wild boars come to eat the crops, they will sound the alarm and chase them out. And yeah, so I went to Brazil with this idea, let me learn more from the tribals over there. And in fact, they turned it around on me. They said, "Oh, you're the Indian guy who knows all about tree houses. Can you teach us?" that a lot of Brazilian youngsters um construction workers that were building stuff on the ground and they all expected me to show them >> how to build a treehouse. Now we we held hands and went together and did a tour around Brazil and built 10 tree houses on that first trip and it was very exciting. We got a good response.

[00:10:20]Everybody was interested to learn. By the fifth one onwards, we were hosting um a kind of get involved course about how to build a treehouse. And Brazilian people are great. They come with their musical instruments. They're always enthusiastic just like trees. And it was a good push for me. It was an understanding that there's a lot of demand for tree houses. People just want to know how to do it. They want to get involved. It's not they just want to have fun together. So then that led me to start this treehouse community Brazil team. There was couple of boys there and some girls who said we're going to take this forward. Come back next year. So I came back um restocked my energies here in India and then I went back to meet them again and continue building and then that landed in a third time when I went back to Brazil to go and maintain some of the tree houses, build some of the other projects that were requested.

[00:11:12]>> This was in 2014.

[00:11:15]>> 2013 14. Yeah, 14 was the third time I went back and stayed for six months, learned Portuguese. um got some good connections with people around there and I was staying at a very magical place. I was doing a lot of internal research um spending a lot of time out in the nature is a kind of savana grassland and lots of waterfalls.

[00:11:38]So in that kind of mystical magic space, it's not like a thought I had that that starts in the mind. And it's something that kind of fell into my head from above and it was like, "Hey, Phillip, wake up. Now is the time to do more. You should do 500 tree houses in your life and you might only live for the next 10 years because it's such a dangerous job. So make it happen." And I took it kind of with a pinch of salt and I was like, "Wow, interesting ideas. Is that possible? How is it possible?" And I came back to Orville with a lot of um energy and motivation. By that time after the first day when that fell into my head, my inbox was already full of people asking for multiple tree houses. Hey, we want to do 10 on our farm here. Hey, can you train 60 people from this Chinese building company to build tree houses?

[00:12:32]Was a little overwhelming for me. I didn't expect it to kick off so fast. So I rounded up all the people I knew who I had been building with before and also people that I knew are good for community and I said look we have to get together and make this treehouse community thing jump to the next level.

[00:12:53]This is our goal. we want to build 500 tree houses only much later on I found out that 500 is the angel number and I've also passed a couple of times very closely but the angels have always brought me back so I have a couple of angels and now I realize why 500 came to me so it's not something very thoughtful or mathematical but it's something that kind of lingers in the atmosphere and my aim was always to reach out to more people around the world who are into um treehouse living, sustainable living, building tree houses especially and promoting bringing tree houses to other people. I think that's important because just building a little treehouse for myself and living there quietly would not satisfy me at all. And that's where this enthusiasm came to do 500. And now in Brazil, we've already hosted several workshops where we've had a dozen or 20 people come and work with us to build a treehouse together and get a step-by-step tutorial for each of the processes. So, I took that with me back to India and we started hosting training courses here for whoever had a farm said, "I want to build a treehouse, simple one. Okay, come along for one week. We'll build one together." And now you have the foundation for um planning and perhaps building your own. But you will need to find an arborist uh architect perhaps you'll need to find the materials and the equipment that you need. So people after joining this oneweek course they had a really good idea of how they can just pull it off to build a treehouse. before that they were a little bit you know stuck and so we've managed to help a lot of people out like that to build their own tree houses and meantime we've developed our team to not only be able to build tree houses but also be able to always carry someone along and train them to to build as well and to learn the ins and outs of this multi-skilled profession because there's really so many things involved that few people can master all of it and we always need to depend on each other to to fill the totality of what a treehouse is with all its amenities with the electrical systems, the water systems, the the tree systems. That gave us the opportunity to come here. I think it was the time you just finished your dormatory. We were expecting a big crowd and we said, "Let's go to Vanashi Farms.

[00:15:11]There's a tree waiting for us." Uh we had seen it already 2 years before.

[00:15:15]>> Yeah.

[00:15:15]>> And took some measurements. We're like, "That's going to be a good spot to build a treehouse." And that was 2015.

[00:15:22]We came here with team of four and built this treehouse with all homegrown wood, indigenous timber that's been, you know, sitting on this farm observing the progress for the past 50 years and then just died and got put into the storm and now we brought it back out and put it back up into the trees where it belongs.

[00:15:40]That was a quick project relatively took us 3 weeks to a month to complete it.

[00:15:45]And with that motivation of having it done went back to Orville where we decided altogether, okay, let's build this kaya treehouse which was in a mahogany tree and it was a massive tree that we had climbed and build smaller structures on it several times before.

[00:16:02]So now the vision was to build a proper functioning full-fledged treehouse with all the amenities that can sustain life and that you can just stay up there for a week at a time or two weeks if you like. It's got four stories.

[00:16:15]>> It's four floors. Yeah. With the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.

[00:16:21]And it's fully off-grid and self sustainable. So, it has solar panels at the top. There's a wind pump that's bringing water. And then a solar system with the batteries, inverter, and all that is on the ground and that runs the pump. The water goes up, gets used, goes back into a soap pit. The tree absorbs it and it's a fully flowing system like that. And the best part of it is well maybe that's the underlying vision for for why I wanted to build tree houses rather than other houses because I had been in construction for a couple years.

[00:16:57]During the summers I would go to Germany and I did two apprenticeships. One as a floor maker which is a line of work.

[00:17:04]They make new floors or refurbish floors out of wood, PVC, carpets, all kinds of different whatever flooring materials you have. So we were building floors in all kinds of houses and the second apprenticeship I did was a as a drywall builder. So drywalls are usually partition walls but we had in done a whole fitness studio of thousand square meters with the saunas and offices and partition the entire space and then I realized that there's different materials to work with and wood was definitely my favorite. I didn't like working so much with carpets or drywall or metal. Um, so I stuck with wood and each of these trips out into the west. I had a grandmother in Germany still. So I would go visit her and then find some work to fund the tickets and to be able to buy some cool tools which were not available in India at the time. For example, battery drill was something you had all over the world. But India it was still difficult to get. So I would bring these things with the little earnings I made from over there. And each time I took off from the airport in Chennai, I would look out of the window and just see what happened to the city. And the first time I was quite young and I realized that the city as it is, it looks kind of sporadic and gray and horrible.

[00:18:21]Actually, to be honest, from the top it looks horrible if you compare that to the beautiful green and blues and like waterways and nature that's around the city. And as I flew several times from the same airport, I recognized that this horrible cancer of city is just taking over at the expense of the nature.

[00:18:42]And I had these, you know, eight or 10 hours in the plane to ponder on this and think, okay, I just this was the last part of the earth I saw after that. It's just being up in the air and thinking about it. And I thought, okay, there's I mean more and more people in India and all over the world, population is growing. Um, who am I to say like a city is not a a good thing for the world, right?

[00:19:04]And everybody deserves to live in a house. Everybody deserves to have bit of comfort drive on the road. I'm not someone to judge and say, "No, these people shouldn't or you should just make high-rise buildings and not occupy this or whatever." So, I was like, what are the alternatives to covering the earth in concrete and tarmac? And one thing that became obvious was just live in a tree.

[00:19:25]>> Treehouse. So if you have a treehouse in contrast to any other house, it does not cover any part of the earth.

[00:19:33]>> Yeah.

[00:19:34]>> So the ground as it is can still percolate water. The root system supports an entire ecosystem. The tree itself is an ecosystem.

[00:19:44]In today's world, carbon is very important. The tree is fixing carbon.

[00:19:48]You're using fixed carbon, which is timber, to build your house.

[00:19:54]And as you live in it, you're just trying to protect that tree to keep it healthy, to make it grow stronger. So you're a steward of the tree, so to say.

[00:20:05]You're actually protecting that tree from what else might have happened to it, which is very often big trees are disrespected and cut down. Now, if someone's living in it already has made use of that tree, um that tree is much more likely to stay alive and it's continuously absorbing carbon. So you're living in this I think it's the most carbon positive home that you could think of.

[00:20:29]>> Trees love humans as well. So when you start living there you can see the tree grow better. Have you noticed that?

[00:20:37]>> Yeah, I've noticed a lot of our similarities. Um and it's become very clear also in like recent literature that trees are very responsive to us.

[00:20:50]>> Yeah. And people need proof to to believe it. So they've hooked up um lie detectors onto trees and check the electrical signals into them. You can get music out of trees by converting the micro electricity that they generate into music through a software. And you can shout at a tree and you can feel how that music is changing compared to when you caress it and think of it nicely. So what they found out is also that you don't you know you can create stress to a tree. For example, I could burn this leaf and it would affect the tree in its some people would say it hurts, but in the, you know, scientific proof that we have, it affects its electrical signals.

[00:21:30]>> Yeah.

[00:21:30]>> So, it'll create a discrepancy. If you just connect the lie detector, it'll be have a steady kind of music and if you burn the leaf, it's going to jump and shout.

[00:21:40]>> Now, they found out that you don't even need to burn the leaf.

[00:21:42]>> Okay? You just think of burning the leaf >> and that intention is going to make the tree scribble and scream.

[00:21:49]>> Wow.

[00:21:50]>> So that's how sensitive they are. And I think between humans, we have a very similar sensitivity. You don't need to >> kill someone with a knife to kill them.

[00:21:59]If you kill them with your intentions, it's it can be as strong.

[00:22:02]>> Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:22:03]>> So that Yeah. It's just something that I became aware of and I'm using it on my own life to try to perfect the energies that I deal with, you know.

[00:22:12]>> Brilliant. Brilliant. Love to see that more. But coming back to the treehouse.

[00:22:16]Um, so yeah, the second one was Kaya.

[00:22:19]>> Yeah.

[00:22:19]>> And that was in Oruroville, the four-story treehouse that you lived and uh, you know, you got married, your partner, you had a child there as well.

[00:22:27]>> Yeah. Two of them.

[00:22:28]>> Two of them. Both in the treehouse.

[00:22:30]>> Yeah. Both kids were born up there. I think they're they're lucky to be because it was at a time where home births even were starting to be almost impossible in that region and we decided to yeah just have the kids at home and our home was in this treehouse up at 9 m in the living room that's where they were both slipped out you know onto the wooden floor and also grew up for a time and I realized it's a very most people think wow you could fall out of a treehouse it's dangerous how can you have a a toddler up there but we just closed it off and made it a kid safe and then they had so many falls like Yasim when he was younger he kept on you know tripping falling over falling off a chair >> and every time he would hit down it's a wooden floor so it's very forgiving it rebounds and it doesn't hurt as much as if you fall onto concrete or a stone floor >> he's five now he's seven >> looks like a tank >> I've seen him I can't wait for him to grow up and you know go out >> and Malia she she spent her first year there and now we moved down to the ground because the kids are need more space >> and when she falls on the sometimes in that ant channel or on the stone floor.

[00:23:37]It's a much harder hit, you know.

[00:23:38]>> Yeah.

[00:23:40]>> So, in that sense, wooden floors are really nice whether in a tree or in a house.

[00:23:43]>> Yeah, definitely. I >> But yeah, we did that um second number two of 500 over there with a lot of enthusiasm. It was a kind of hobby project. So, we didn't have a clear goal when to finish it. And in between as the work was going on because I was just inviting whoever came uh volunteers, travelers, architects, everyone got involved. We had at least a hundred people participating in that build and we had given it some breaks. Sometimes for a month we would go out and do another project. For example, in Chennai, we did um a tandem project. So with our whole team of eight, we went and build two tree houses together. So, four of us were on in a school building a treehouse for the kids and four of us were in a private place building a treehouse for one kid.

[00:24:29]>> One for many kids and one for one kid.

[00:24:32]>> And that was three and four. And then it it kept on going like we got more and more requests. We built treehouse number 29 in Sweden, diamond 29, because it had kind of the shape of a diamond. And then we built crystal 30 in Berlin because the diamond inspired us. But we couldn't do a diamond twice. So we made a crystal shaped treehouse. Number 69 we did in New Zealand.

[00:24:56]>> Do you also remember the tree there in?

[00:24:58]>> Yeah, I remember all the trees.

[00:24:59]>> Yeah. Can you could you from the first till 69 and then following? Can you tell the name of the tree and the scientific name?

[00:25:06]>> Yeah. Okay. So this one number one here is the Devdara treehouse. It's in Albizia Saman or some people call it Samana Saman. It's a Peruvian tree originally rain tree. They call it tongamongji maram and tamil sleepy face tree because when it gets dark it goes to sleep the leaves fold.

[00:25:24]Number two is the kaya seneagalencis which probably comes from seneagal. It's an African mahogany um which had been planted in Orville as an effort to to create shade and reforestation.

[00:25:36]So it probably got planted in the 60s or so when Orville started and now it's a 50-year plus tree with a good girth and strong. Number three was in Chennai in the Tabibuya rosia which is also a Peruvian originally Peruvian tree with pink flowers that's why Rosa and the other one in the school was Azada indica our well-known name tree from Tamil Nadu number 29 in Sweden those were that was penos sylvestrus so pine trees >> um the one in in Germany the crystal 30 was a robinia pseudo acacia >> okay >> which they call acacia trees in Europe, but it's a pseudo a fake acacia.

[00:26:17]>> Not acacia like here.

[00:26:19]>> No, it's actually an American tree that got imported into Europe and is now going pretty wild. It has a lot of thorns like the >> oak hook thorns, >> but it's one of the strongest timbers you can get in in Europe, >> most resistant, similar to teik or so.

[00:26:35]And then number 69, we had to go to to New Zealand because I think 29 we had done in New Zealand. Just two of us, Noi and I, we got a spontaneous request, come over for two weeks. We want to build a treehouse in a dakri carpus driki tree.

[00:26:56]>> That was a small tree through which we took um the stairs through.

[00:27:00]>> Yeah. and the other there were uh three trees that we based the treehouse on and those were pine trees but um New Zealand white pine the name slips me right now it's an indigenous pine that they used to um they cut most of it down um in New Zealand now it's full of normal pine plantations but that was historically used to make boxes for the butter >> Oh okay >> cuz they would export a lot of butter and that wood doesn't have any smell like the other pine woods would put its smell into the butter so it's like a neutral wood.

[00:27:30]>> Yeah.

[00:27:31]>> Yeah. And then we went back to do number 69. Guess why?

[00:27:36]>> Special number. I mean that place in New Zealand where we worked.

[00:27:39]>> Yeah.

[00:27:40]>> It was an ISTA center where they deal a lot with sexuality and um basically healing people of problems they might have had in their youth or something regarding sexuality. So there is a lot of sexy stuff going on >> there.

[00:27:54]>> And so they they kind of booked number 69. So when we were done with 68 here or 67 we were building that was Vinnie's scorpion nest which was the simplest treehouse we ever did. It's like a fishbone structure one beam and a couple of rafters and a tiny house between two small trees.

[00:28:11]>> So one was this acacia or equaliformis and a copper pod pelform terarpum.

[00:28:17]>> Yeah.

[00:28:18]>> And so I I wrote them. I said hey look this we're building 67. They said you have to come for 69 back to New Zealand.

[00:28:24]>> Okay. Um, so we went there and built between a Monte Bay Cyprus.

[00:28:29]>> Yeah.

[00:28:30]>> And a penis radiata. Penis radiata. Let that sink in. Number 69. Penis radiata.

[00:28:37]What does it make you think of?

[00:28:42]>> Okay, let's not go too much into that.

[00:28:45]>> I'm a bit through with the numbers because by now we got to number 175.

[00:28:49]>> Okay.

[00:28:50]>> And each of these three houses um they don't fit into my brain. And so I use a computer and I use paperwork still. I do a lot of the designs and the planning on paper with pencil.

[00:29:00]>> It's the most durable form of documentation I found. It's not the most easy to share or whatever, but >> we have a physical file for each of these tree houses and that's accompanied by a digital file on the computer that contains >> all the pictures, all the correspondence, emails, order lists from uh timber shops and all that >> digitally stored there. The physical file has all the sketches, all the lists, all the planning that's been done on paper. Yeah.

[00:29:29]>> Um, sometimes we print a couple of the pictures and keep them in there as well.

[00:29:33]>> So, that's the basis of the research. I feel it's very important to document all of this >> so-called research that we're doing because like this one after 10 years of going back, you can just open the file and look at the p at the thing and say, "Okay, this treehouse has uh 12 rafters on the floor. It's made with so many uh cubic feet of wood. So it weighs two and a half tons and all the details are already there. It's clear. And so for me this documentation helped a lot to further the planning of future tree houses because they fall into similar categories of height, size and >> depending on the tree a lot.

[00:30:10]>> Seen you do puja before you start the workshop. I mean working on the tree. Um that's the respect you give to the tree and then say that you know try that's what we have in this our Hindu culture as well that um whatever pain that we co while the construction of the house >> we do uh certain homeras after that um to pray for forgiveness for whoever whatever the life forms in that area which has been destroyed because of the construction of the house I think something similar that you do.

[00:30:44]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do a puja which is interpreted in many different ways. Uh some people think it's the Hindu ceremony. I do pujas with Hindus. I do pujas in every part of the world. And most people are very accepting of it.

[00:30:57]Often quite skeptical at the start like what is that? You know um we're not uh religious or something but it's a very basic um moment. I see it as a moment.

[00:31:10]We always do a puja before starting a construction and also when we finish it and in fact every moment of life I think is an opportunity to do a puja and I do it every morning before the work starts and before things get hectic. Um it's a very dangerous job we have. So I do it to just center myself and often create the space for others to center themselves and just to breathe and realize their connection with the trees.

[00:31:37]This oxygen CO2 um chemical interaction that we have the energetic interaction that we have and there's so many ways in which we are close to trees that I think in everyday life and in most people's brains it's kind of shut out. It's just like trees are very different, you know.

[00:31:56]I can I can have a dog or a cat which I can really associate with. It can be my little doooo dudoo. Um, but trees people will be like, I got this house plant. I put it in the corner. It needs a bit of water, some light, maybe a bit more light. And there are some people of course who do a little bit of cuddling with their trees. But I think it's largely under valued the connection we have with trees. That's why I my job in life is to try to reenhance that connection that people have with trees.

[00:32:25]>> That's lovely man. It's really I really appreciated it from the day one what you doing there. You s spoke about how it's so dangerous as well. And I have seen you work with safety a lot. So you have the harness, you have all these uh you know the ascenders and then the griies and all industrial standards. Um how like did you were you into safety from day one or did you have some experience and then you thought that hey we have to go all this do all these things for safety and also could you could you explain us uh or tell us about what are the equipments that you use from this climbing industry or you know the people who work in heights basically >> and just give us a idea about what all these different equipments that you use.

[00:33:08]Yeah. So, the equipment, no, I haven't been using equipment from the start. I have two very good pieces of equipment here. This one and this one. And they usually save my life um and carry me forward. These two pieces of equipment, my feet are also very reliable. Um and I think it's very important for everybody to who who wants to get into this line of work to be able to climb trees with hands and feet. And now, of course, some trees are very difficult to climb without any help. They're perfectly straight and slippery, so you might want to put a ladder. I've quickly noticed that ladders are one of the most dangerous pieces of equipment you can get because people fall off them.

[00:33:50]They're shaky. The bottom can be dislodged.

[00:33:54]There's other ways to build tree houses which many people do is just erect the scaffolding all around and work from the scaffolding. Build your treehouse and remove the scaffolding. Now that's a lot of work. Before I got really seriously into building treehouse, like I said, I was doing tree work for about 4 years um with the ISA International School of Arbor Culture. It's an Australian certification agency. So I was following those principles, their textbooks and they have of course high safety standards. It's a professional setup.

[00:34:27]It's a line of work that also you have insurance coverage. So you need to be within a safe zone. Uh they have a good track record in tree climbing. I've also done the industrial climbing license in London which also has a very good track record. There's very few casualties and and injuries because they always maintain a very high um standard of safety. Now in India sometimes people neglect it just because it's the equipment is not available or it's expensive or it's uh difficult to to get on. It's also very hot in fact wearing a lot of uh protective gear. It increases your chances of just passing out from a heat stroke in the tree which is another risk.

[00:35:10]Um but yeah, basically when we build a treehouse, we rarely, very rarely do any kind of scaffolding and we access the tree as if we were going to do a thorough pruning of the tree. So it's very important to get into every little branch and understand what this branch is doing to the totality of the tree to see where it's it center of gravity, how has its growth been developing over the past 10, 20 years. We can read that off the tree the way there's dead branches in certain places and we really need to assess each and every little extremity and then maybe if necessary do a little bit of trimming. So for that anyhow it's very important and necessary to have a harness because many branches are not accessible without a harness. So you need accessory anchorage points. The most challenging part of a treehouse is of course getting um a staircase up there and then having a platform. After that, things get a little bit easier because you have a flat surface. So during that initial period of building when there's nothing up there, we're always hanging on ropes and a safety harness. There are different kinds of harnesses. There's those for rock climbing which are really simple. We sometimes use when we travel, but u arburist harnesses are a bit more padded and they have several loops so you can click yourself into various points. you can be really stable while working with power tools, chainsaws, um drilling machines, angle grinders, these kind of things can jump and kick back. And if you're already balancing on a tree without any stability and a machine kicks back at you, you're likely to either cut yourself or maybe drop it onto someone else who's below or injure the tree because you just cut it by mistake or just fall off by yourself.

[00:36:52]So, we want to avoid any kind of accidents and therefore we're always on harnesses. All our tools are connected to the harness. So even if we drop the tool, it's still hanging.

[00:37:02]And that way we've had a very very good um safety record in now more than 15 years of professionally building tree houses across all the continents except Africa and Antarctica.

[00:37:17]>> Nice. It's really challenging to build a treehouse in Antarctica for sure.

[00:37:21]>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh I wanted to hear more from you about the well this treehouse that the New York Times has said that one of the 10 best places to be in the world at that time in Peruan Jungle, the Alta Sanctuary.

[00:37:36]>> Mhm.

[00:37:36]>> Um I'm glad I was kind of a mediator between you and uh the people who uh requested you to build that. Paul was only a good friend of mine >> and uh yeah. Do you want to explain that how it's it's a I think the it starts from the 11th floor or something if I'm not wrong.

[00:37:54]>> 11th floor, >> isn't it?

[00:37:56]>> It's at Yeah. 30 32 m ground. So that would probably be the 11th floor.

[00:38:02]>> How many trips you've done to build that? How many people were involved? How much time was involved? And uh yeah, what what woods did you use? And how challenging was it? because that place was so remote that u you know from the nearest town you had to drive 5 hours and then on a boat for an hour. I mean it's definitely not in the middle of Amazon but definitely in the periphery which feels like a middle to us because >> and that's how big the Amazon forest is.

[00:38:31]Yeah.

[00:38:32]>> Yeah definitely. I mean, we've and and my aim is also to do tree houses in every different situation to travel to every little extremity of the world and find out what all trees and techniques are available and keep learning, keep learning, keep trying new things all the time. I don't want to get stuck in a set method or so if somebody proposes us a challenge like this, I'm very happy about it. Yeah, I'm very happy if they um aid me to travel to a new place and help them create their dream making a treehouse.

[00:39:04]>> So, the jungle keepers called you and you >> So, the jungle keepers? Yeah, it was actually on a visit in Chennai when we were I think servicing one of the the tree houses or maybe even building it. um where Paul and then Stefan and Mosen, they got in contact on a phone call and Paul was American jungle dude who could go for days on end in any kind of forest and survive and he came here as we were building treehouse number one.

[00:39:31]>> That's where we met the first time. Um then we didn't have contact for a very very long time until while he was busy furthering his uh jungle keepers project there in South America and then he had this idea let's build a treehouse here but let's do it like no other let's make something super unique. So his idea was let's just take the tallest tree and build right on top and the tallest tree over there. So well they called me and we started to talk about it. I said okay if you know um which tree you want to use then let's start to work on the details and how we can go about this and they said no we can't do that it's a jungle you have to come and help us find a tree so I said okay I'll come happily I mean if you cover my airfare I'll be there any day it's always a dream of mine to go into the jungle so I packed my small bag with a bunch of climbing equipment to be able to get up to any tree and I went to Peru, but unfortunately I got there without any bags. Airline disruption. So, >> with Paul's help, he had a rope and he knew that there are some trees that have these uh banyons growing on them. So, you can get some grips and you can climb up there without any equipment. So what we did is we climbed up the biggest uh silk cotton we could get up to maybe 20 m and from there we had a little bit of a view over the canopy so we could identify which are the tallest trees that are projecting over the canopy back towards their station. And now this is jungle. You have to you need a machete to move 2 m forward and you don't really know where you're going because everywhere looks the same. So we had to then try to find those trees that we identified from 500 m away on the top of some other tree almost impossible. And during that limited time I had planned I think three or four days to come there find the tree decide with them how the process is going to be what kind of woods they have to get.

[00:41:36]>> So I actually sat all of them down and I gave them each a paper and I said please draw your >> ideal imaginary treehouse. We're going to run a workshop. This is how I do it with when we train people. This is treehouse architecture 101 here. Just plan it. Think about what you want. Put it on paper and make a presentation. If you can't draw, then talk about it. If you can't talk, then sing about it and make a poem, whatever.

[00:41:59]>> So, we did not actually we identified some of the tips and then we walked around and we couldn't find the base of the tree. And that night >> you could see the top, but you couldn't find the base.

[00:42:09]>> Yeah. We saw the top jungle >> 500 meters away. And we knew somewhere there there should be a very tall tree.

[00:42:15]>> Yeah. So we went around in the bushes zigzagging and tried to find this. We found many big trees but we weren't sure like this is probably not the one.

[00:42:24]>> Yeah.

[00:42:24]>> And on the last day we were leaving at lunchtime and I decided to go on a quick round in the morning still and find that tree. And because it was very interesting there was a big storm during the last night I spent there and these kind of storms they don't have >> for years on end. So it was like once in 10 years storm.

[00:42:41]>> Okay. And that really showed me how strong the trees are, how much actually crashes down.

[00:42:46]>> Oh, okay.

[00:42:47]>> Um, we had a lot of tree falls and everything. So, I I was excited about this new landscape that the storm created. And I took my machete and went out >> and found the base of this tree. And now it wasn't just one tree. It was a composite tree. Can you believe that? It was just the most ideal situation ever.

[00:43:03]You had a big hard wood in the middle and this soft strangler fig that's been encircling and fully surrounded this original tree. So, two trees in one.

[00:43:13]>> Yeah.

[00:43:13]>> That just shot up >> to about 50 m. And it was definitely the tallest creature in the entire area. So, it was way taller, at least 20 m taller than the canopy. So, that's when we pinpointed the tree and we said, "Okay, here we're going to do it." And to me, it was the biggest challenge ever. They wanted to go as high as possible and they wanted to go into a silk cotton tree which was even a little bit taller.

[00:43:37]>> Yeah.

[00:43:38]>> But silk cotton from my experience, they're one of the weakest uh trees. They have thorns. They're very difficult to they don't react well to pruning. So you can't cut bigger sections. They don't heal over well.

[00:43:51]They tend to rot. So putting a big infrastructure into silk cotton seemed um not so safe for me.

[00:44:00]Besides that, it was the tallest tree.

[00:44:02]So, I was fearing that it might attract lightning and just be unsafe for that reason. So, we chose the neighboring which was the second tallest and it was a fig tree >> which is very good. Attracts a lot of wildlife.

[00:44:12]>> Yeah.

[00:44:13]>> And Yeah. So, from there on we started to plan. I made them a wood list. I made them a conceptual design that we would have a staircase wrapping around the this 2 and 1/2 m wide trunk. Yeah. so that you could explore all levels of the canopy as you go up and see the different creatures that are living up there. We came back to Orville. I explained the team about you know this potential of of doing a project there. I got in touch with all the people I know around the world who have experience with uh building with us with our team and I chose the best one. So we assembled a team of eight people and we met up there to finally make this treehouse. There were a few delays. So, we had ordered this wood. We had come back and we actually found a project here at Keith House. There was a similar tree but a much smaller one. And we said we're going to test this helical staircase on that tree. So, in real life on an actual project, we did a test for this type of staircase.

[00:45:11]>> And that is now for the treetop cafe.

[00:45:13]>> No, that's for the >> different kaya nest at kas.

[00:45:16]>> Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:45:18]>> Then we found out that they were actually cutting us short on time. Yeah, >> we planned for 3 months to be able to do this >> grandio project. They said no, we have only 2 month.

[00:45:29]>> So we tried to see where we can cut time on the project and we went back to the concept of a spiral staircase which is independent of the tree.

[00:45:38]>> Yeah.

[00:45:38]>> Is kind of modular and you can build it really quick. So we did a test spiral staircase at our workshop in Abri also where we got all the same sizes of wood as we had ordered from them.

[00:45:48]>> Mhm.

[00:45:48]>> And we bashed it up and noted down every little detail. Yep.

[00:45:52]>> To come to the conclusion that we can do with a team of four people uh I think a round per day or something and a round would take us up three and a half meters.

[00:46:01]>> Yeah.

[00:46:02]>> So I made the calculations and I said okay in one month staircase is up and we have one more month >> to make itself.

[00:46:08]>> Yeah.

[00:46:08]>> It was very optimistic and difficult to keep up with that timeline.

[00:46:13]>> Like you said there's no roads in this part of the world. Everything moves by river. Yeah.

[00:46:17]>> So all the wood that we had ordered moved up river >> on boats and then it got dragged through the mud.

[00:46:24]>> So the conditions were very very bad. Um even though it was the best quality wood that you can find all around the world.

[00:46:31]So this manil car >> um which is same like chiku what we have here. It's from the chu family. It's a very deep red wood. It's super resistant and it's sold internationally for the highest prices.

[00:46:43]>> Okay.

[00:46:44]>> And we had a great stock of this wood to work with. But each piece was completely soiled with mud and sand. So quite a challenge to get it ready.

[00:46:51]>> Yeah.

[00:46:51]>> To work with. Also in terms of hardes, in terms of machinery that we had planned to use, a lot of it didn't arrive right until the end. Despite all the challenges, I think the good mood made it possible amongst our team of eight that we were to build it.

[00:47:06]>> We're quite a balanced group. I find that's the biggest challenge usually on a complex uh project is the human challenge. It's always much more challenging than the technical challenge. Technical challenge is easy to overcome. You can find solutions quite easily.

[00:47:21]>> Humans are complicated >> for sure.

[00:47:25]>> Towards their expectations.

[00:47:27]>> Yeah, we just did whatever they were dreaming of and we made this pretty high up. Um, >> how big is the space? The how many square feet?

[00:47:35]>> The treehouse is 8 m long almost in both directions. So, it's around 60 square m of space and you have mostly the huge branching tree right in the middle.

[00:47:45]>> Yeah.

[00:47:46]>> And then there's a shower and toilet and bathroom covered space on one side and a bedroom with air conditioning and a little bit of furniture on the other side and lavish balconies on both sides and all around the >> And what's the view like over there?

[00:47:58]>> The view is like um perfect for people who love to be in the forest. It's really nice because you get to see over the forest and I think that's >> ocean of canopies, you know, like >> Yeah. ocean of trees and in the morning mist and you feel like you're in a kind of surreal place. You just have all the sounds of the different birds that are waking up and you have different kinds of monkeys passing by. The most amazing time was actually during the build when the trees started to fruit and you had this cacaphony of birds that normally don't hang out together, you know, separate from like worlds apart. Birds that hate each other but they come together because they all love the fruit. They so much that we were slipping around on the wood because it was just wet with bird all over >> and we have to shout at each other to be able to understand because they are so loud as well.

[00:48:44]>> Yeah.

[00:48:44]>> And uh I think I was there as well in the Amazon with you guys when uh Pah happened where the Andes mountains like the clowns from the Andes mountains ranges comes into the Amazon and showers cold rain and the temperature changes from 30 35 to >> 12° >> 12. Yeah. Yeah. It was quite cold a few days, but it was a blessing for us because during the hot times, sweaty, that's one thing we can deal with. But after being sweaty over there, it's just a big uh party for the wasps and the flies.

[00:49:16]>> They bite you. Yeah.

[00:49:17]>> So, when the cold came in, that's actually when all the insects >> were freaked out. They're like, "This is not our local climate. Let's go back into our houses." And we had two or three days where we could work without thousands of wasps biting us all over the place.

[00:49:30]>> Yeah. Nice. Nice. That's thanks for sharing that uh Phillip and um the latest treehouse project that you did uh is actually a space where maximum amount of people would walk in. Uh I think already in the last 1 month the amount of people have been into that uh treehouse or the tree cafe rather it's probably more than uh the total number of people have entered all the tree houses that you put together. Maybe maybe not but >> that's a good guess. Yeah, I think so.

[00:49:58]And yeah, this is the treetop cafe. I mean I highly recommend to everybody to go and check it out. You can have a lunch or breakfast or dinner over there.

[00:50:06]So yeah, explain how many floors it has and uh how big that is.

[00:50:10]>> Yeah, the treetop cafe was originally also planned again as a treehouse for overnight stay for guests to have a nice place to you know have a romantic time and later we realized so shankar who's a good friend now um from Kro grew up in this area as well. He used to climb guava trees like a monkey and we really connect on many levels. So he then said, "Come on, let's make it also for more people. If it's just two people a night, it's not fair for the others who don't get to go. So let's make a treehouse cafe." At that point, I told him, "Yes, okay, treehouse cafe is one thing, but let's also make a tree top cafe because not everybody can climb to the top of a tree. We can't make a house at the top because the branches are too thin.

[00:50:55]So let's give people that opportunity of experiencing the top of a tree.

[00:51:00]>> Yeah.

[00:51:01]>> So for that we developed a whole new system of a staircase tower. So the one in Peru uh 32 m high was based on a very indigenous homemade uh concrete slab that we made by ourself with very minimal material. So even rubble and sand was brought up the river.

[00:51:22]>> Yeah. And there's this colossal 23 tons of giant hardwood chunks standing on this slab.

[00:51:30]>> So, it's a freestanding self-supporting staircase with a central pillar around which the stairs go and four additional pillars for rigidity and stability.

[00:51:39]>> This is a little bit dizzying and a little bit constricting because it's a spiral staircase. So, we decided to make it more comfortable than a spiral. So in effect again like a helical staircase where you wrap around the stem of the tree but with a hollow center so that we could have an elevator going up the center rather than a tree and have this freestanding tower a little aside from the tree. So >> the elevator is for the food too.

[00:52:03]>> The elevator is now just for the food.

[00:52:05]It was intended as a home lift. So um less under you know less abled people could also have access to the top >> but because of all the regulations and all we could not do it and we just made a food elevator.

[00:52:18]>> So this new staircase system is >> much better um designed for absorbing load and for having redundancies. So it has instead of one central pillar and four outers it has 12 pillars. So if any one or two or three or four of them go, there's still eight pillars that are holding. Um so in that sense, it can also take much more weight. It's well distributed. The concrete slab here has 4 cubic meters of high concentration concrete. It's the most concrete I've ever used on a single project. Yeah. And it's just a circular slab like that, 20 cm thick. And this staircase takes you up to 18 m, which is the height of the top of the tree. Now, we didn't want to go any higher for obvious reasons.

[00:53:01]Again, lightning. Um, you don't want to stick out like a sore thumb in the landscape. You're going to let the trees, you know, do their thing and look nice.

[00:53:08]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:53:09]>> But at that level, you can just peek over the treetops and you can see um 60 kilometers off to the eastern guts. In fact, to Gingi on on clear days, you can see 60 kilometers. It's a long way.

[00:53:22]>> Yeah.

[00:53:22]>> You can't see the ocean because that's covered by trees, but you can see in all the other directions.

[00:53:28]And on the way up there, you have six different um floors. So, we designed it as different levels. And Chunker's inspiration was to make it with driftwood.

[00:53:38]>> Okay.

[00:53:38]>> Which we didn't have much of. So, we used just wood that's been waste wood lying in the forest that looks like driftwood. And we made it quite fully natural. Nothing is painted. Um it's supposed to look, you know, just rustic.

[00:53:50]>> Yeah. Yeah, >> but it has these six different floors for people to just go and have a coffee and sit down and have their own space and one of the floors is a stage so people can come and do performances. Um, one of the floors has a billyard deck so people can play their games. Some of them are very tiny floors so you can be in a smaller group and yeah, most importantly it's a public treehouse which has been something that's been on my mind for a long time. The one in Amazon is great. It's a beautiful thing but it's not accessible to the public.

[00:54:20]Yeah, >> it's so far in the jungle. It costs a lot to to stay there. So, it's not very accessible. Now, this one, it's very accessible. The stairs are comfortable.

[00:54:30]>> People love to go there. The food is good.

[00:54:34]So, this is been part of my mission since day one to promote tree houses to um give people the opportunity to get into a tree and experience that feeling of being in a treehouse. That sounds >> and in fact since after triage number two in New Lands we a short time after in 2017 we got this workshop in Abri which is closer to the road and the main objective of having this place was to create a public treehouse space and the treetop cafe was born over there.

[00:55:05]>> Yeah.

[00:55:06]>> Um we were going to do it in a eucalyptus tree.

[00:55:08]>> Uhhuh. with a very similar vision, an 8 8 by 8 like 64 square meters main floor and a big central tower with a small floor on top where you have this amazing view and you can show people how the efforts of Orville's reforestation took place in different levels of canopy and you can inspire people to participate in that reforestation and respect trees. So this was the basic initial vision 8 years back it kind of fell into um sleep mode while we were busy with many other things. And now it came up again. And finally after about six months of putting thousands of pieces of wood together with dozens of thousands of bolts and screws and nuts, um it's holding strong together and I'm really happy that you know most people who come up there, they're just smiling even without having a coffee and then they have a coffee on top of it and it's double smile. So >> wonderful. I am uh I'm really grateful that uh we had an opportunity to have you at the farm and build this treehouse and also travel with you in many places uh and you know seeing your build and all this and uh the one thing really stands out I mean everyone wants to have a treehouse but how safe it is you know like how strong it is and I remember asking the question once you build the treehouse here the dev hey how long this treehouse is going to live I mean stay you know what's the life of this treehouse house and you said uh it's the life of the tree you know treehouse will live long as long as the treehouse and you know one of the reasons for that confidence in that you have is probably because of uh the PK standards what's a PK standards and can you explain like how many more screws than normal that you would put in a PK standard >> yeah I mean it comes from this thing I wasn't very satisfied with it in India you get so many cheap products on the market and it always has a nice, you know, holographic sticker that says, "Okay, tested." So, it's supposed to be good. It's supposed to be a symbol of confidence that this fan or whatever you just bought is okay. It's good. And then I did some research on that and I found out that this okay standard it comes from and this happened to be a German industrialist person called Otto Krauss.

[00:57:23]And Otto Krauss he had he was an engineer in the car industry, right?

[00:57:27]Huh.

[00:57:28]>> And he had to put down his signature on whatever car parts were then set out to be mass-produced. So they were in the research phase and he would um scrutinize everything and only when he dropped his signature on there then it would get cleared to go into research and the car industry was in the industrial revolution. It expanded.

[00:57:49]There was thousands and thousands of workers. So it became known amongst all those workers that this is a kind of reliable standard. this okay standard and came to India it got diluted I guess with a bit of water everything was okay um so then we realized that you know in when you build a treehouse because of safety considerations like you said everyone's dubious like is it going to be safe now or next year is it still going to be safe so we want to ensure um continuous safety and therefore we do um redundant systems like I was explaining with the tower with 12 pillars Not each one is essential for bearing the load of the entire tower. Um, and when one starts to wither or rot, you can see it in time and replace it. It's totally different from having a single stilt, for example, which is essential.

[00:58:40]If that one goes, everything goes. So, in a triage, we use a similar approach of multiple systems. So, we have bracing systems downwards. Then, we will couple that with an a hanging system. Even though hanging systems are often not as reliable, but they'll be accessory. So we want to have at least two or three systems that guarantee the structural safety of every part of the tree.

[00:59:02]>> So they has three, the footing and then the on the branches itself and then the hanging one.

[00:59:09]>> There's always a a multitude of them working together, right? And we often try to make every branch participate in supporting this so there's not one left out and in effect kind of training each of these branches to become stronger.

[00:59:23]>> Yeah.

[00:59:23]>> So the simplest way I explain it to people is what is this PK standard? So if you join two pieces of wood, right, in a in a quick way, you will need a nail or a screw or a wood peg or something a joining piece. So if you rely on that, that one little piece could fail at any moment. Say the screw has a defect. It can happen. Or say the person who put the screw in in the morning, he was in a bad mood. He put it in improperly. So that screw is not reliable per se. It can be, but in some cases it won't. Now that's definitely not okay just to put a screw. Now let's say you put two screws. So you have redundancy. If one is failing, the other one holds. You put one from each side for instance. Great. Now that's starting to become okay. It's reliable. If you want it to be extra reliable, you put three connectors or have three different systems supporting one cause. And there you get the PK standard.

[01:00:21]>> PK standard.

[01:00:23]I think definitely gives us confidence to stay up in there even during monsoon and storms even though you don't recommend it. But uh the treehouse that we've had, it's lasted 11 years and it's strong. It has had uh two um two kind of services done by you in the fifth year and the 11th year. Um >> well we did stay in the staircase on the 10th year as well but uh yeah it's it's fantastic and you know a lot of people have stayed up there and uh I hope more and more people come and enjoy the space the daru treehouse at the farm >> and uh yeah thank you for um thank you for coming and doing this. I know you for over 12 13 years now and we're good friends and I hope uh the I wish the best for the 500 treehouse journey and I hope I get to see many of those as well.

[01:01:12]>> Yeah, >> thank you Philip.

[01:01:15]>> Thank you. Thank you. I'm very confident about this Dave Dar tree house. In fact, when we built it, it was a very young tree >> so we had to stay to the minimum lightweight construction. It was probably 20 maybe 30 years old. Uh fast growing tree. So it was already sizable and I I know that each treehouse we built, it's the first one or two years >> that's the most risky in a sense. That's when they are put to the test. The tree has new load on it. It's a new situation. It's getting shaken. So you have to wait for those one or two growing seasons to have full confidence that this treehouse is easily accepting this load. In between some things might need to change. But like here after 11 years that if it was 20 years old at the start.

[01:01:57]>> So it's um 30% older this tree. So in 30% of its life it had been bearing this load of three tons additionally.

[01:02:07]>> And each of those um 10 years that it's been growing now it's been growing towards that load that it's bearing.

[01:02:15]Yeah.

[01:02:15]>> So trees are dynamic engineers. They're always adjusting to the forces that are around them. And if they're in a windy area, they become more um flexible. If they have more weight on them, they become stronger to towards supporting that weight. So now I'm very confident and I'm happy that the tree is, you know, showing good growth and therefore with a lot of confidence, it was easy to put an extra couple square meters with a toilet and a sink to up the level of comfort a little bit. And I hope all the guests now enjoy having a L with a view.

[01:02:48]>> L with a view. This is something that most people don't have at home. Les are always closed up and they have a door in front of you. Maybe a poster.

[01:02:56]>> Here you have just open Vanashi Farms, the birds, everything is there.

[01:03:01]>> Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you, Phillip. And thank you, Roshan from Discover Agriculture for uh um having this.

[01:03:09]>> Any questions from your end?

[01:03:11]We're not talking so much about agriculture here but >> agri tourism agurism like that'll support farmers you know so we started this whole stay as agurism where people can know where the food uh is grown see it you know and also like have a different kind of stay and not the the resort luxury stay but like the farm scene but also like a special experience and uh >> it all started off with the treehouse for us other than the dome we built the dome and then treehouse came and now we have cottages, simple rooms >> and a lot of people come here for agurism. So >> I hope a lot of people who are into agri tourism connect with you and build tree houses.

[01:03:50]>> There is also the treehouse permaculture concept which we touched on when we built it and we were um explaining how when you build a house with a roof in a tree then it creates a dry zone on the root patch of that tree. So you need to compensate for that by doing permaculture together with the tree. for here. It's not a situation where we have to um put a lot of focus on that because your farm is one big ecosystem. You have pepper growing up that tree. We just saw it all ripening. The pepper has engulfed the the tubes of the water pipes now so they don't need to be tied on anymore and there's jackf fruits growing all around. But we did um say that it's quite important to in in some cases people have a tree in their yard and there's nothing growing there. So we try to promote people to plant something else together with the tree because trees don't like isolation.

[01:04:41]>> So you grow a bit of your own food. You grow something up the tree with the water that you use in the tree. You you start doing your little permaculture around the tree. So there's this treehouse and permaculture are very close to each other. In fact, we often do a little bit of effort after building the the treehouse to clean up.

[01:05:01]Now this time we didn't manage to do it but maybe on Monday or so we um burn all the off cuts to create biochar so that carbon is fixed for 50 years there in the soil and you use that biochar around the tree to grow a couple of even if it's symbolic plants some pineapples you know a papaya tree or two and then when you now you have a toilet around the soak pit you can have other um plants bananas or something that sucks a lot of energy and they grow off your poop. When you come down the treehouse, you can have a spot where, you know, you can pee and urine fertilizes some of the plants.

[01:05:36]So, it becomes a human plant ecosystem.

[01:05:39]Yeah. A nice entropic system as well.

[01:05:41]So, there you go guys, we have Philillip here. And uh if you have a farmland or if you have a forest lot or a big tree in the backyard, if you want to have a treehouse built, this is the man you should connect with. uh all the details will be given below uh in the in the links will be given below and the details of how to connect with Philip and the treehouse community will also be provided and I can assure you that uh the the safety is pretty damn good and he builds very artistic tree houses which also make structural um architectural sense as well. So thank you Philip. Thank you. It's >> good having you. Good to have you here as well.