Song of India

“Follow your bliss!” Joseph Campbell famously said, so she did. After several harrowing years of losses, author Mariellen Ward set out to recover from grief, understand the essence of yoga and rediscover the joy of living by traveling, studying yoga and volunteering in India.

The stories in this collection are inspired by the scorched earth of the Rajasthan desert; the hypnotic currents of India’s most sacred river; the awe-inspiring spectacle of the sunrise reflected against the white wall of the Himalayan mountain range in Darjeeling; the masses of people at the world’s largest spiritual gathering; and the intense, smoke-filled darkness of a night facing death on the river in Varanasi.

They are geographically diverse, but thematically linked by the author’s transformative journeys across the subcontinent and her obvious love for the culture, the country and the people of India.