Dicing with Death: India/Bangladesh: The Traps of the Brahmaputra

In this acclaimed series, we journey on some of the world’s most dangerous routes and explore the lengths people go to in order to change their destinies.

From the peaks of the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, the Brahmaputra river flows for 2,900km through China, India and Bangladesh. One hundred million people live along its banks and depend directly upon it for their survival. In the mountains of North-East India, its rapids make it impractical for navigation and tracks are the only means of supplying the villages on its banks.

And so, drivers undertake a most dangerous journey on board ancient trucks, brushing precipices and crossing suspension bridges whose planks threaten to break at any moment.

In Bangladesh, thousands of cows are transported along the river in simple wooden boats, while crowded ferries play bumper-boats as they try to plough a path to the docks. Boats in Bangladesh are mostly constructed from materials retrieved in gigantic shipyards where men work in wretched conditions…

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