Henri Louis Grin, born in or near Paris in 1847, reinvented himself as Louis de Rougemont. From 1898 he wrote for the British magazine The Wide World Magazine, describing pearl and gold hunts in New Guinea and claiming to have lived for thirty years with Indigenous Australians, who he said worshipped him as a god. He also claimed to have met the 1874 Gibson expedition in the outback. His stories were later shown to be fabricated, but they were collected in a lavishly illustrated book in 1899.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.