This was the second book I wrote after Hand to Mouth to India. It was scribbled on notepads in Nepal, Turkey, Israel and more or less completed in England. It was my first attempt at something like creative writing though almost everything in the book actually happened - I just didn't have all the facts at hand and so had to dramatize snippets of stories as i imagined they might have been.

In many ways I bit off far more than i could chew trying to write the life stories of men over 30 years older than me. How could Ipossibly understand the meaning of a lifetime when I was only 22 years old? A lot is to be desired too in the writing style. I was still too enamored with flowery prose and spiritual cliches to tell a good story. Still, having said that the tale itself is a good one and it deserved to be told; the life stories it describes were truly exceptional and even if Itell them in a somewhat idealized form at times it should still hold interest.

This is the tale of two men in the East. I met them both on my first trip to India I met them when i was 18.They didn't seem in the least surprised to see me turn up, eager and naive, absorbing all their stories like a sponge. Hell, I was probably the only person to bother listening in years. I took everything in without question while I had the chance and only through the years have I begun to pick out what works for me.

The first guy lived on a few bananas a day in a cave in the Himalayas for seven years. Then he inherited big time and became a playboy in Bangkok. The second was a Sufi in Morocco before leaving for Thailand where he swam 5km out to sea every day, even in the middle of thunderstorms.

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