For a eight year period (1959-1968), India came into its own as . . . the place to be.Far Asia was open to foreigners. The difficult journeys of new generation became, for those who made it, a memory of one of greatest travel epochs of the twentieth century. Today these overland journeys of the 60s are as distant from today as the travels of Marco Polo in the thirteenth century. In the twenty-first century, Far Asia has changed completely, along with whole landscapes which have been subsumed by newly created mega cities.The Orchid House: Art Smuggling and Appointments in India and Afghanistan is a rare first-hand account by one of the first "world travelers" of a new generation to reach India.