In the early 1960s, travel-writer Simon Gandolfi drove a VW from England to Goa where he rented a bungalow on the beach at Calangute. It was here that Gandolfi met and loved Vanessa and explored with her much of the subcontinent. The 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai prompted Gandolfi to re-explore the subcontinent on a small motorcycle. Collecting a Honda 125 from the factory outside Delhi, he rode for six months and 12,000 kilometers. This memoir chronicles his two journeys in which Gandolfi explores both the changes in modern India and in himself.