The story of Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, who spends his childhood as a vagabond in Lahore. With an old Tibetan lama, he travels through India, enthralled by the 'roaring whirl' of the landscape and cities of richly colored bazaars and immense diversity of people. Creates a vision of harmony - and of India - that unites the secular and the spiritual, the life of action with that of contemplation.