How a 97-year-old escaped deadly Indian floods on a banana log raft

A woman wades through floodwaters outside her inundated house at a village in Assam's Sivasagar

Well past midnight on 19 July, as floodwaters surged through a village in India's northeastern state of Assam, Bornali Baruah and her husband were trying to save his 97-year-old mother.

Almost bedridden, Lokada Duarah could not walk. There was no boat, no rescue team and no neighbour available to help. So they lifted her onto a makeshift raft made of banana trunks, and carried her through the rushing water towards safety.

"Everyone was trying to save themselves," Baruah says.

An hour later, she says, the three of them reached a shelter camp on a national highway some distance away from their house in Charing village in Sivasagar district, one of the worst flood-affected districts.

The water was three to four feet deep and the current so strong that they had to move slowly, holding each other's hands and using sticks to steady themselves.

By then, Baruah's home was disappearing beneath the flood. The water would eventually rise to about five feet inside it.

Baruah quit journalism to concentrate on animal husbandry

The scene in Charing was part of a much wider disaster unfolding across Assam.

The latest figures put the death toll from floods at 100, with 10 districts and 456 villages affected and about 140,000 people impacted. Fifty-two relief camps have been set up. Overall, the floods have affected nearly 1.2 million people across 25 districts, damaged more than 19,000 houses and left more than 75,000 people in 252 relief camps.

The floods have been particularly severe in parts of Upper Assam, where villages like Charing that do not usually flood have been inundated.

For Baruah, 40, the shock is especially profound.