The Brahmaputra’s night ferries: the river boats that never stop
While the city sleeps, the Brahmaputra's ferries carry nurses, milk and newspapers to the chars.
The night ferries of the Brahmaputra run on schedules that predate the city’s streetlights: diesel boats that carry nurses to island clinics, milk to markets and newspapers to villages that have no road.
The service is quiet, unglamorous and essential — and it is being modernised with GPS and weather alerts.
The ferrymen’s union keeps a simple rule: ‘The river never closes. Neither do we.’