Dr. Aziz is a young Muslim physician in Chandrapore, a British Indian town. Mrs Moore, an English woman, meets him in the courtyard of a nearby mosque one evening; she and her younger travelling companion Adela are dissatisfied with cramped British colonial society and want to explore more of the 'real' India. However, when Aziz offers to take them on a tour of the Marabar caverns with his close friend Cyril Fielding, the excursion ends with a bombshell charge, sending Chandrapore into a racial frenzy.