Dusk, the river unspooling
What we will enter.
I came to the Talo, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, with a head full of second-hand knowledge. Arunachal Pradesh and Assam had existed for me mostly as abstractions—borderlands in textbooks, settings in novels, places mentioned more often than known. This journey was an attempt to let those fragments loosen and rearrange themselves through direct encounter.
Packrafting slowed everything down. Alone in a small inflatable raft, inches from the water, the river became the only axis of attention. No signal, no audience, no parallel life running alongside the day. Each paddle stroke was a choice and a commitment; momentum came only from presence. Stillness was not the absence of movement, but a sustained clarity.
At the same time, the trip was deeply communal. Strangers became companions through shared effort—setting camp, cooking, reading the weather, tending fires. Meaning accumulated quietly, not through explanation but through repetition: water, light, hunger, laughter, fatigue. What unfolded was not understanding in the analytical sense, but a steadier form of knowing—one rooted in rhythm, proximity, and trust.
Mountains recede; motion takes over.
Sand gives way; the river answers.
Smoke writes briefly into the sky.
Water and sky hold the land
The river carries the fire before we do.
The body learns the river’s pace.
Light becomes a surface.
Nothing left to negotiate.
Fire shapes the meal
Direction without explanation.
The river accepts, briefly.
A horizon that refuses to end.
***
Ankur Shah is an architect, startup cfo and board member who is drawn to overlooked histories, questions of identity, and the ways place shapes how we see ourselves.
In January 2026, he spent six days packrafting one of the primary tributaries of the Brahmaputra as part of Knowhere Travel’s Talo Drift expedition, beginning at Nizam Ghat in Arunachal Pradesh and finishing downstream past the Dibru Saikhowa National park in Assam.
The Brahmaputra, one of the world’s great rivers, rises in Tibet before turning south and west into India. In its descent to the plains of Assam, it spreads into a vast braided system—multiple shifting channels threading through sandbars and islands. It was within this wide, restless geography that the journey unfolded.
February 18, 2026