Tahir Shah, an anti-hero among explorers, is looking for the most famous lost city in history. Personally he loathes the jungle, it's insects and savages. Tahir's collaboration with his jungle guide Richard Fowler ends dramatically and Tahir sets his hopes on Eduardo Huamani. Eduardo knows Pancho, an Indian who in his youth, he says, saw the ruins with his own eyes. Together the three of them head off deep into Madre de Dios, the misty rainforest of Peru, in search of the legendary golden Inca city, Paititi - the House of the Tiger King.