The man who planted a forest on a sandbar

In 1979, when he was about 16, Jadav Payeng walked onto a sandbar in the Brahmaputra and found it covered with snakes that had died in the heat after a flood. The Christian Science Monitor, reporting from Jorhat in June 2016, writes that he asked village elders what could be done and was told to plant bamboo for shade. He started with 50 shoots and kept going.

The forest that grew, known as Molai Kathoni after his nickname, covers about 1,360 acres, a size the paper compares with New York's Central Park. It includes teak, mango, banyan and many other species, and has become home to birds, deer and, according to the reporting, rhinoceroses, elephants and tigers. Payeng, a member of the Mising community, lives in the village of Kokilamukh and earns his living by selling milk from his cattle and buffaloes.

Working alone, he watered the saplings with earthen pots hung with small holes so that the water dripped slowly. His work was little known until a local journalist, Jitu Kalita, brought it to wider attention around 2009–10. In 2012 Jawaharlal Nehru University gave him the title Forest Man of India. A documentary, Forest Man, followed, and he later received the Padma Shri.

The story is not only a happy one. The reporting records that around 2008 some villagers who had suffered damage from elephants wanted to destroy the forest, and that Payeng defended it. His next ambition, the paper reports, is to protect Majuli, the Brahmaputra island that is steadily being eroded.

If you travel to Jorhat or Majuli, treat the area as private land and farmland, and speak to your operator before planning a visit. Payeng is a working farmer, and not a tourist attraction.