Indian travellers use a country boat to

Indian travellers use a country boat to cross the gulf between two sections of National Highway 52 at Lakhimpur, some 400km from Guwahati on June 16, 2008. Flash floods and mudslides unleashed by heavy monsoon rains have claimed 25 lives and displaced 200,000 people in northeastern India, officials said. A Central Water Commission bulletin said that the main Brahmaputra river and its tributaries were flowing above the danger level in at least six places, with the trend likely to increase. The 2,906-kilometer (1,816-mile) river -- one of Asia's longest -- traverses China's Tibet region, India and Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. Every year the monsoon causes the river to flood, submerging paddy fields, washing away villages, drowning livestock and killing people in Assam, a remote state of 26 million people. AFP PHOTO/STR (Photo credit should read STRDEL/AFP via Getty Images)