River Cruises

A river gives you the country side-on: ghats, brick kilns, a boy swimming a buffalo across. On the Lower Ganges the ships run October to March between Kolkata and Farakka — Kalna’s terracotta temples, the brass beaters at Matiari, Murshidabad’s silk. On the Brahmaputra the season is shorter and the reward larger: Gangetic dolphin off the bow, Majuli’s satras with their masked dance, elephant grass running to the horizon at Kaziranga. Kerala’s backwaters are a different animal again, a converted rice barge and a cook aboard. We match vessel to water level, book the upper-deck cabins early, and send our own guide with the ship so the shore walks are ours.