Thirteen year old Ben is angry and isolated after his father dies of lung cancer, and his mother worries that Ben is withdrawing from the family by wasting his time with computer games and skipping school to hang out in video arcades.

Ben's grandmother invites him on a seventeen day trip to India to look for her childhood pen pal. Ben always thought he'd like to travel one day, though never with his grandmother, but the ticket is already bought and immunization shots are booked.

In a search that starts in the long lines of a Delhi registry office, Ben and Gran travel across the huge sub-continent by plane, bus, train, taxi, boat, rickshaw and horse-drawn tonga. Along the way Ben is strangely compelled to be near the magnificant live elephants and the Hindu elephant boy-god, Ganesh.

Following one clue after another in a giant game of Snakes and Ladders, Ben sees magicians swallowing knives, cobras being milked for venom and bodies being burned on funeral pyres. Through insufferable heat, strange food and the constant haggling of street beggars, Ben is increasingly irritated by his grandmother's attempts to control him. He disobeys her and becomes lost in the dark labyrinth of a Hindu temple where he stumbles onto a statue of Ganesh.

Their journey continues to the Bay of Bengal where Ben meets Rani, a beautiful Hindu girl, who talks to him about her belief in reincarnation, forcing Ben to think about death. Gram develops food poisoning and in saving her life, Ben comes across a last clue and uses his computer skills to lead to a joyful reunion of the grandmothers.

The challenges of the difficult journey teach Ben to value the computer as a tool rather than an escape and to come to terms with his father's death.