"Problem with boat," he announced in a very matter-of-fact way.

"Problem?" I asked groggily, having just emerged from under my thick mosquito net.

"Yes," he replied. "Boat sank. You want tea?"

All night the heavy rain had pounded our huts. It came in intense waves, the wind rattling doors and window frames, and by morning the village was sitting in a mud soup, the bloated river lapping high against protective dirt walls.

Our small boat had been among several moored in what the night before had been a protected inlet, and several young boys were now working with old pans and leaking buckets to bail them out and pull them further up the receding river bank. They chatted and laughed, slipping and falling in the mud. But with the rain still falling it seemed like a hopeless task.

VIDEO: Polluted Ganges symbol of India's water problems

Within two hours he’d rustled up a bigger boat – "this one will make it," he told us in an attempt to reassure - and the mud-splattered NBC team, guided by the helping hands of scores of amused villagers, was soon making its way gingerly across a thin plank and onboard the bobbing vessel for the five-hour river and road journey back to Calcutta.

The village in which we’d spent the night was on a small island in the Sundarbans, which lie at the mouth of the River Ganges, where India’s most revered river empties into the Bay of Bengal.

The monsoon rains here are intense, and being caught in the middle of it does leave you wondering how India could possibly have a water shortage.

Click here to read the rest of Ian William's blog "Water problems in India" in the Daily Nightly blog. His report is the first in the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams series "Thirsty Planet" about water issues accross the globe.