India: Varanasi. Dead bodies don't say no.

Have you seen a dead body?

Wow, what a bad choice of icebreaker.


Icebreakers should be fluffy questions like when is your next holiday? Or what was the first movie you remember seeing?


I've never seen a dead body and once thought it would be curious to see if others have. At a party I once asked a girl if she had seen one. She said that she saw a dead body as a child- her mothers. Oh crap


Anyway I would like to use it as a horrible transition to move onto how I saw my first dead body in India. It floated past me. My first time was special.


We were in Varanasi on the bank of the river Ganges. The Ganges River runs across India and is considered holy by Hindus. The locals bathe, wash, shit and bury their dead in this river and not surprisingly it's horribly polluted.

Massage tables on the side of the Ganges.

After a tour of Varanasi by a boy named Babu (he took us to his uncle's carpet shop – surprise!) we went on a night cruise on the Ganges. While watching a Hindu ceremony on the riverbank I spotted something silently float past me. On closer inspection it was the body of a dead Indian facing down into the river.

The Ganges at night. The location of my first dead body sighting.

It was interesting to see, but I am still not going to use it as an Icebreaker. Even in blogs.

Hooray for hypocrites.