- Title: River Traveller
- Author: Sanjoy Hazarika
- Publisher: Speaking Tiger
- Genre: Narrative non-fiction / Travel
Sanjoy Hazarika’s deeply personal journey along the Brahmaputra captures the river, its people, and the stories we are in danger of forgetting.
River Traveller is a journey undertaken by veteran journalist Sanjoy Hazarika along the mighty Brahmaputra to film a documentary.
His pilgrimage—because for him this is deeply personal—starts in Tibet, at the river’s source, and then follows it as it flows into Arunachal Pradesh, through Assam, and eventually into Bangladesh.
If you want to truly understand the Brahmaputra—its geography, history, people, politics, ecology, conflicts, cultures, and the quiet crises unfolding along its banks—this is the definitive book to pick up.
I’ll admit, the beginning felt a bit cluttered. There’s a lot of history and anecdotes thrown at you, and it takes a moment before the actual journey starts to come through. But then again, I take time to warm up to books.
Stick with it—and somewhere along the way, it pulls you in completely. It flows like our river.
From moments of raw vulnerability—like weeping in a high-altitude town in Tibet after a fallout with his crew—to being chased by river pirates in Bangladesh, the journey is deeply human.
Those of us who know Sanjoy da know his deep love for the river and for the people who live along its banks. He founded the Brahmaputra Boat Clinics, taking healthcare to nearly three million people across 2,500 remote river islands—chars and saperis—that the system often forgets.
So when he writes about the river, you feel it. He knows it—even if, as he jokes, he still doesn’t quite know how to swim.
The book reads like a journey with a close friend. He introduces you to people like Kapilash Choudhury, a third-generation boatman and pilot of his clinic vessel Akha—someone who can read the river like a map, even when there isn’t one.
And then there are moments that stay with you.
In one chapter, as dusk falls on the Brahmaputra, a man signals desperately from a small spit of land. His child is gasping for breath, turning blue—minutes away from death. The team anchors, diagnoses pulmonary oedema, and begins treatment right there on the darkened shoreline.
Within minutes, the child stabilises.
Later, the doctor tells the father, “You were lucky we passed this way.”
But the reply is what hits you: they weren’t lucky—they were waiting.
The family had been tracking the clinic’s movements for months, knowing it would pass on that very evening.
This stayed with me long after I put the book down.
The book also slips into the layered history downstream—stories like that of Daniel Rausch, a little-known trader whose life opens a window into the decline of the Ahom kingdom.
Today, a lone red-brick memorial in Goalpara is all that remains of Rausch—built for his twin sons who died within hours of birth. The Brahmaputra flows on.
What stayed with me even more was this: during a visit to Ziro, I met a young man from Goalpara. I asked him if he knew about the trader or the memorial.
He had no idea.
That’s why this book is important.
One story that felt especially close to home was that of Kinthup—a Sikkimese explorer whose name has largely been forgotten.
Sent to solve the mystery of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra connection, he endured betrayal, slavery, and abandonment, yet persisted with remarkable grit.
Here was a fellow Sikkimese who played a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the region’s most important river—yet returned to obscurity.
River Traveller makes you see the Brahmaputra as a living force—one that has shaped destinies, erased histories, and carried stories.
For those of us from the Northeast, this book hits differently. Because it is about our river. And it is about us.
Long after you’ve finished reading River Traveller, the Brahmaputra keeps flowing.
Also Read: Tiny beetles, big discovery: Three species found in Arunachal forests
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