Boats on the River

Abstract

This chapter recounts how long wooden boats were central to the Brahmaputra for hundreds of years. Human coexistence with the Brahmaputra was made possible with the use of boats. Over the centuries, people developed special skills to build boats from locally available trees. Boat-making became a specialized craft. Long, hollowed trees were used to construct small boats for everyday use and short trips; long-distance river travel was rarely undertaken. Small tributaries connected the floodplains and the hills, and small canoes easily moved along them, allowing trade to flourish between these two regions. Boats have thus been central to the human relationship with the Brahmaputra. They brought people close to the river, helped them make peace with it, allowed peasants to carry their produce to faraway places, and rescued the valley from a life of isolation.