The East is defined by the great Bay of Bengal and the mighty Brahmaputra that pours into it, creating the Andaman Islands. Or so a geologist assured Hugh and Colleen Gantzer. But they found more than dense forests there. In Ross Island they had an eldritch encounter in the ruins of an abandoned church. In this, the fourth book in their Intriguing India series, the Gantzers describe the other experiences they ve had in the Eastern States.In Puri they saw a million people, of all faiths, held in disciplined awe as the enormous chariots of three forest deities rolled by.Cruising on the mighty Brahmaputra they came across a powerful Sino-Burmese dynasty: the Ahoms had ruled Assam for longerthan the combined dominance of the Mughals and British; and then they had vanished without a trace. On a visit to the largest riverine island in the world the Gantzers found a fascinating faith in which some monks dance and others make masks as a religious duty. At the sacred shrine of the Mother Goddess Kamakhya they saw evidence of an ancient celestial catastrophe. They unearthed evidence in Nagaland pointing to the overseas origin of these very special people. Assessing the mounting threat to Tawang from across the border, they ask, Why are the Chinese so eager to capture the Golden Monastery, repository of ancient Tibetan scholarship? Does its esoteric library and museum hold an awesome transcendental secret which can be turned against us? The Gantzers, once again, bring their gentle curiosity to bear on questions that orthodox science does not want to ask. And they give their own intriguing answers.
