His imagination captured by the account of a sixteenth-century Spanish monk who reported that the Incas "flew like birds" over the jungle and by tales of flying in Peruvian folklore, the author sets out to discover whether the ancients really were airborne - or experienced flying by other means. A shrunken head from Peru and a feather with traces of blood on it are his only clues when he begins his quest for the Incas' secret.
But soon he's trekking in the high Andes, where he pitches up at Machu Picchu, the Incas' most sacred city, and one associated with the condor. From the metropolis of Cusco he motors out to a mysterious island on Lake Titicaca. Gathering treasures, curiosities, and dubious companions along the way, the author follows his trail to the coastal desert and the baffling puzzle of the Nazca Lines. It was these inexplicable etchings in rock, so huge that the animal forms they represent can only be grasped from the air - that is, while flying - that Erich Von Daniken attributed to aliens in his Chariots of the Gods. Is it any surprise that ancient cloth from a nearby burial ground bears images of bird-men? After an encounter with a guinea pig-wielding shaman, it's off to the Amazon, where the author joins a Vietnam vet on an epic journey deep into the jungle to uncover the secrets of the Shuar, a tribe of legendary savagery reputed for their expertise with ayahuasca, the mind-altering "Vine of the Dead."

Tahir Shah was born into Afghan nobility in 1966 and grew up in England. The author of Sorcerer's Apprentice, also published by Arcade, he has written widely on the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and South America and is completing his next book, In Search of King Solomon's Mines. When not traveling, he lives in London with his wife and daughter