Sanjoy Hazarika
River Traveller tells the story of a great river, as powerful as it is mysterious.The Brahmaputra rises in Tibet, travels through three countries and,after travelling over 2,900 kilometres, flows into the Bay of Bengal. It hasfascinated cartographers, lured adventurers, attracted kings and dynasts,and has supported life and ways of living by its banks. It is one of the world’slongest and widest rivers-sustaining entire civilizations and agrarian systems.Alongside, its unmatched fury has destroyed human overreach for centuries.In River Traveller, veteran journalist and writer Sanjoy Hazarika makes epicjourneys down the mighty river and describes all of this-and more.In his travels spanning over two decades, Hazarika gets to know the riverintimately, and brings both a journalist’s eye for reportage and a writer’s finesensibility to his descriptions of places, people and events, and his accounts ofthe river’s historical burden.He describes a Tibet that is trying to hold on to its cultural legacy in the faceof Chinese rule and the land’s exploitation for its resources. He recountsstories of explorers, spymasters and map-makers who discovered the route ofthe river. Travelling with the river in Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam andBangladesh, he notes the changing face of the expansive waterbody. Makinghistorical connections with conquerors and colonialists, studying naturaldisasters, and minutely observing the contemporary lives of people, he createsa narrative as majestic as his subject.From extremism to environmental responsibility, politics toethnography, River Traveller touches on a multitude of subjects, and is anenduring study of human life and natural history. It is a rich and memorableportrait of one of the mightiest rivers on our planet.
