"Journey to the East" is written from the point of view of a man who becomes a member of "The League", a timeless religious sect whose members include famous fictional and real characters, such as Plato, Mozart, Pythagoras, Paul Klee, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Baudelaire, and the ferryman Vasudeva, a character from one of Hesse's earlier works, Siddhartha. A branch of the group goes on a pilgrimage to "the East" in search of the "ultimate Truth". The conclusion of the short novel is a stroke of Hesse's typical Eastern mysticism at its finest.