January 2026 marks the formal planning phase of the ETHNOMAD River Transect, an ethnographic expedition grounded in geographic method and long-form fieldwork. The Transect will follow the Teesta River from its glacial source in the eastern Himalayas through India and Bangladesh to its confluence with the Brahmaputra and onward toward the Bay of Bengal. This is both a geographic transect and a cultural one, tracing how rivers shape identity, belief, and survival across generations.

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The Teesta rises in the snowfields of North Sikkim, between the borders of Bhutan and Nepal, where thin mountain air carries the scent of juniper and pine. Here, the Lepcha, regarded as the original inhabitants of Sikkim, call the river Rongnyu Chu, the lifeblood of the land. Homes of timber and stone cling to steep slopes above terraced fields of millet, cardamom, and buckwheat. Nearby, Bhutia and Nepali communities, including the Rai, Limbu, and Tamang, live by a highland rhythm shaped by cold winds that dictate when to plant, pray, and travel. Each village holds its own customs, its own strong, sweet tea, and its own accounts of mountain spirits and retreating glaciers.

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As the Teesta descends into West Bengal, the terrain opens into a wide, fertile plain. Santhal and Oraon communities cultivate rice and maize, while Rajbanshi families fish and farm along the river’s shifting banks. Daily life centres on the haat, the village market, where fish fry cooks beside baskets of green chillies, woven saris hang in dust-filled air, and the smell of jaggery and betel leaf carries through the heat. Folk songs are sung after dark to the steady rhythm of the madol drum, marking rain, harvest, and human ties to land.

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Crossing into northern Bangladesh, the river widens and fragments into braided channels and shifting sandbanks. Here, life is shaped by constant uncertainty. Villages emerge, vanish, and are rebuilt again using bamboo and clay. Fishermen launch narrow wooden boats before first light. Women dry fish on woven mats beside the water. Boat builders, potters, and weavers maintain skills refined over centuries, trades that demand the same patience and attentiveness as the river itself.

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Beneath this continuity lies growing fragility. Climate change is accelerating glacial melt in the Himalayas, altering seasonal flows and increasing the frequency of floods. Dams upstream, erratic monsoons, and erosion place mounting pressure on livelihoods. In the charlands of Bangladesh, families relocate their homes repeatedly as land is claimed and reclaimed by the river. Songs that once praised abundance now carry themes of loss, movement, and memory.

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The ETHNOMAD River Transect will document these realities through writing, photography, and film. It will record everyday knowledge and lived experience: meals cooked over wood fires, children bathing in shallow water, elders reading currents and sand like a map. This is a study of people who live with instability as a condition of life, revealing what it means to belong to a river that never stays still. For ethnographers and explorers alike, the Transect is a sustained engagement with the cultural and environmental heart of South Asia, where nature and human life remain inseparable.