My memoir is an accumulation of wisdom and guidance wrapped up in the compelling story of my overland rite of passage to India with nothing but a knapsack and an eagerness to find my raison d'être. By being transported to unfamiliar terrain--a time in the past, in parts of the world rarely explored--the listener becomes a witness to appreciating sacredness by being present in the moment, honoring and experiencing feelings, finding meaning in life, and resolving past psychological injuries.

From the author: Why the heck did I think I'd be a modern-day Christ overlanding through Europe and the Middle East to reach India, in my youthful quest for self-illumination? Naively hitching through treacherous deserts where locals hungrily waited to lighten me of my material possessions? (And they did in Turkey, stealing all of my traveler's checks that American Express declined to reimburse!) Suddenly, I found myself poverty-stricken, dehydrated, intermittently sick, traveling on an infamous stretch of history's formidable Silk Road. Mortally stricken, crippled without the youthful energy and mobility I had proudly heralded until then, how would I continue on my torturous odyssey, questing for the sacred to deliver me of my human trials? Yet, as in all of life's adventures and misadventures, I needed to *un*learn old ways to learn new ways of coping, to pull out our hidden potentials to surmount unexpected encounters.