A ‘defining event’ in John Scott’s lifelong interest in India its holy men was his first six-week pilgrimage to that country nearly 40 years ago. It left an indelible mark on him, but he as only now put to paper the extraordinary series of adventures, some comic, others hair-raising, that beset him and his then wife Barbara as they traversed the length and breadth of the sub-continent in his quest to ‘make a connection’ with sages and saints such as Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, and Neem Karoli Baba. He hiked through Himalayan forest, was punted up the Hooghly from Calcutta and, braving king cobras, climbed to the summit of the holiest mountain in South India. But he was brought down to earth from his uplifting spiritual experiences by farcical battles with Indian bureaucracy, Kafkaesque encounters on interminable train and bus journeys, and a fall into a town sewer. Because apartheid was then at its worst, permission for the Scotts’ extend stay in India as itself a near miracle.