This travel text by a direct descendent of Clive of India retraces his ancestor's journeys around south-eastern India, interweaving a biography of Clive and the East India Company with accounts of the author's own adventures. Holt's plans often don't work out but his disasters reveal as much of India and Indians as his successes. Along the way he meets a faith-healing American Methodist minister, Bangladeshi refugees, taxi drivers, a bizarre array of fortune-tellers, museum curators, many local characters. He also visits a leper colony and is frank about the country's poverty, crowds, dirt, stench and corruption.