Mark Twain’s two-month sojourn in India formed the most absorbing part of a round-the-world tour he undertook in 1895–6. Retracing the American humorist’s itinerary, Strathcarron travels from Mumbai to the Himalayas, visiting Jaipur, Delhi, Varanasi and – in what is now Pakistan – Lahore. He stays in the same clubs, rides the same railways and, like his predecessor, meets both the mighty and the meek.