Liz Gross finds out the tough life in the river islands of Assam

For a moment that afternoon, Dodhia seemed the most beautiful place imaginable. From their stilts, buildings made of wood poked out from languidly rolling expanses of neon-bright grass. But the water-weathered buildings betrayed the ephemera. Despite four foot stilts, flood waters reached the bottom of homes. The water that nourishes Dodhia also wreaks havoc on it.
Dodhia is one of the 2,500 river islands of the Brahmaputra. These islands, called chars in Bangladesh and saporis in Assam, have 2,300 villages, which are home to three million people. On some islands, villages are just a few huts, while the largest and best known sapori, Majuli, has a population of 1,50,000. Despite wide variations from island to island, all saporis are similar in their dependence on and vulnerability to the Brahmaputra.