Drowning in the Ganges Read online

  “Bucket list item checked off,” Australian Woman declares while raising up her right hand, and with a pretend pen pressed between her fingers, makes like she’s checking off a box marked on a piece of paper. “Thanks for speaking up, Vincent.”

  “My pleasure,” I lie.

  Both boatmen are now sitting up front in the bow, one man gripping one oar apiece, rowing. The boat moves faster now. Downriver, towards the ancient city of Varanasi where today many old and sick people will breathe their last and then be burned upon a funeral pyre of thick logs. Some of their ashes will be tossed into the Ganges, the same body of water that gave them life so long ago, but not nearly long enough. I almost joined them. It would have been a good, honorable death. An ultimate sacrifice for Mother Ganges. But good death or not, I’m glad to say I survived.

  If you enjoyed this journalism single you might also enjoy BREAKDOWN and Vincent’s best-selling novel, THE REMAINS.

  Vincent Zandri is the New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of more than sixteen novels, including The Innocent, Godchild, The Remains, Moonlight Falls, and The Shroud Key. A freelance photojournalist and traveler, he is also the author of the blog The Vincent Zandri Vox. He lives in New York and Florence, Italy. For more, go to http://www.vincentzandri.com/.

  Drowning in the Ganges: A Journalism Single

  First Edition: September 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The author is represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.

  All photos, including cover, by Vincent Zandri