Our first stop, Majuli, gives some idea of the staggering scale. The island has more than 200 villages, a population of around 50,000 and can be up to 70km long. I say can be, because it waxes and wanes; every monsoon flood leaves behind a fresh puzzle of banks and sandbars. The people of Majuli are of the Mishing tribe. Nobody knows for sure what their ethnic origins are, but they are thought to have come from the mountains of what is now Tibet and northern Burma, and are famed as followers of a bewildering Vaishnavite sect that broke away from Hinduism in the 15th century, rejecting the strictures of the caste system. They bury their dead, speak a scriptless language, and worship the blue-faced, multi-armed god Vishnu at strange satra (monasteries) – some for celibate monks, others for whole families.
“I am as much a foreigner here as you are,” whispered Shatzil as we sat in the arcaded courtyard of Kamalabari Satra while priests in white robes staged a Matia Khora devotional performance, frenetically pirouetting while pounding goat hide drums with tamarind sticks. Next, Shatzil did his best to navigate us through the cultural minefield of a satra where we were welcomed by young, mischievous-looking monks who grow their hair long, wear lipstick and dress as girls. At a third satra, whose temple is fashioned as a giant rearing cobra, monks pay obeisance to the deity by smoking cannabis (though not in front of tourists).
Life on the riverbank – Back afloat, I slipped into a more languid mode, watching river life unfold as we sailed downstream. At times it felt as if we were on a tea-coloured sea, so wide was the river, but more often the buoy-marked navigation channel weaved between sandbars or stayed close to the banks. Ours was not the only craft on the water: permanently ahead was the tug-like, government-operated survey vessel with sonar and GPS, checking that the channel was safely dredged; near the bank, fishermen flung nets from naukas, wooden canoes that look like dugouts, but are actually made of joined planks.
The floodplain was brown and the horizon blurred by haze at this time of year, in contrast with the autumn when expanses of green rice paddy unfurl northwards towards snowcapped Himalayan peaks. “It is prettier then, but the wildlife is at its best right now,” Payal enthused as she trained her binoculars on an arrowhead of ruddy shelducks winging over the surface. Earlier, we had watched long-limbed adjutant storks standing metre-high and majestic between dips of their beaks into glistening mud.
For me, the Gangetic dolphins were more of a marvel. According to Payal, because the water level is lowest at this time of year, they congregate for protection – which is why we encountered so many schools (or possibly the same schools repeatedly) that they almost ceased to be a novelty. Frequently we’d see just a few grey backs arcing in a series of ripples, but sometimes I was close enough to glimpse a barracuda-like beak with tiny teeth and dots for eyes. About two metres long, they are almost entirely blind and hunt by echo-location.
