A river so wide you cannot see the other bank. Tea gardens stretching to the horizon. A one-horned rhinoceros moving through the morning mist. And a 600-year-old kingdom that repelled 17 Mughal invasions and never once surrendered.

This is Assam — the gateway to India's Northeast, threaded through by the mighty Brahmaputra, and home to some of the most extraordinary stories this country has to tell.

Ray takes you through the dramatic landscape of the Brahmaputra valley, the world's largest river island at Majuli, and the tea gardens that put Assam in a billion morning cups. We trace the history — from the ancient Kamakhya temple and the saint Sankardeva who built Assam's cultural soul, to the great Ahom kingdom and the Battle of Saraighat where Lachit Borphukan defeated the Mughals on the river.

We meet Bhupen Hazarika, whose voice was the sound of the Brahmaputra itself. We meet Hima Das — the Dhing Express — a farmer's daughter who became India's first world athletics gold medallist. We eat Masor Tenga and Khar and bamboo-shoot pork and til pitha made for Bihu. We visit Kaziranga, where the one-horned rhinoceros was pulled back from the edge of extinction in one of conservation's greatest victories.

And we dance Bihu. Because in Assam, that is how you say: this is who we are.

New episodes every Tuesday at 7pm. Next week — Bihar.