Warning: this warning contains the words “bugger” and “tosspot”.

The six hour train journey from Bangalore to Chennai should have been so, so bad.

Firstly the train was old - not 1960s old like me but pre-war. If it had a name, it would be called Arthur or Doris, and it would talk incessantly about how much better things were before I was born. It was certainly geriatric because it moaned and groaned and smelled of piss.

Secondly, although the sleeper carriage I inhabited was air conditioned, the fan languidly pushed the air around like an eighty year old smoker blowing out the candles on their birthday cake.

Thirdly, it was filthy. Dirt was caked on all of the hard surfaces and on some of the soft ones too. Even the dirt had dirt. The only saving grace was the bed linen which was mercifully clean.

Finally, and the real biggie, was the cockroaches. Bugs of all sizes were scurrying in the aisles, skating across the floors and climbing up the furniture. One brave soul clambered up my trousers to say hello. My witty repost literally crushed him.

Thankfully, I was joined on my journey by Rajesh, a soft spoken Hyderabad man with a subtle wit who owned his own pharmaceutical retail company. He was returning from a number of seminars for Christian businessmen which had lasted a week and he was missing his family badly. We talked about many things on the journey, from family to the banking crisis to our childhoods which although had been separated by five thousand miles, were remarkably similar. He gave me some practical advice about how to handle the rickshaw drivers in Chennai, who were supposed to be real robbers especially if you were unfamiliar with the city.

The six hours disappeared with gentle conversation and humour and I felt good about meeting this random stranger who I found so likeable. When the train pulled into Chennai, we shook hands and went our separate ways.

A bunch of auto-rickshaw drivers pounced on me as soon as I left the station and I haggled my journey to the hotel down from 350 to 250 rupees. At one point the driver tried to grab my bag as we walked to his auto, and I realised it was a distraction and a means to keep me following him, as I spotted a pre-paid auto stand near the station. This is where honest auto drivers (yes - there are a few) ply their trade with regular work, rather than touting for occasional work and charging three times the price. I left my grasping driver by the side of the road and queued for my ticket. It was 66 rupees.

The journey through the Chennai streets in the auto-rickshaw was hot. Chennai used to be called Madras, and now I realised that British curries were called "Madras hot" not because this region was famous for hot spices, but because it is sweltering hot itself. Positioned on the East coast of India by the Bay of Bengal, Chennai has a particular smell. A mixture of the heat and sewage pollution from the river Cooum which runs through the city (plus exhaust fumes from vehicles and a number of factories) gives the air a decidedly sulphurous quality. In other words, it stinks of rotten eggs.

I got to my hotel as the sun was going down. As my mosquito repellent was giving me headaches, I decided to stay in, get a good night's sleep and get up early to clear out of town as soon as possible.

The next day I caught a state bus to Mamallapuram. State buses are famous for two things; they are cheap for relatively long journeys and their drivers possess homicidal driving skills. These creaky old tin cans on wheels lug migrating families, itinerant salesmen, market workers and their (often live) produce and the occasional backpacker at breakneck speeds down both interstate highways and crusty rural roads. The buses only break for stops. Pedestrians, animals and speed bumps do not exist to a state bus driver. Other vehicles only exist to be overtaken - especially on wild, hilly bends with sheer drops on either side. Oncoming vehicles do not exist even in the driver's wildest imagination. I may sound like I am joking, but trust me - I'm not. As I stepped off the bus, my teeth were still chattering in rhythm with the juddering of the bus.

Mamallapuram is little more than a village with a dusty road as the main artery and weather beaten shops lurching over the sparse, broken blocks that made for pavement (great cement slabs carelessly tossed over a barely concealed sewer). I felt like I was in an old American western town, only without the fun bits like saloons, wild gun fights and haggard, gap-toothed prostitutes. The village is famous for its rock carvings - most over twelve hundred years old - and the sound of chisel chinking on stone can still be heard resonating around the buildings as modern day artisans carve statues for the handicraft shops all over India.

The first shock I had was seeing other Westerners. I hadn't seen any since touching down in Bangalore, and I felt strangely annoyed, as if they were intruding on my unequivocal right to be the only foreigner in India.

I settled into my hotel, guzzling down a huge, delicious thali prepared by the hotel restaurant. Then I went for a stroll. I walked up and down the main road, every shopkeeper apparently eager to become my friend with their almost tuneful calls of, "Hello."

A local supermarket brought me back to my days as a small child in the seventies - a bright, earthy smelling room with high a ceiling, parading row upon row of cluttered boxes of all shapes and colours in seemingly random fashion.

I moved on and found the nearby beach where the fishermen were packing the day's haul. In the distance I could see the intriguing outline of the Shore Temple - one of the tourist highlights of the town. A little girl tried to sell me some beaded neckbands, and although she's the only hawker I've met so far who was really quite sweet and made me chuckle, I still declined her wares. Now I wish I had bought one and made her day.

I ambled back to the hotel away from the tourist highway through the backstreets where the indigenous population lived. Old men were standing in their doorways wearing short loincloths. In India, it is considered indiscreet to show too much leg, but old men can do it with impunity - and they do so with glee. A group of women were using brooms made from long straight twigs bound together, ineffectually sweeping dust from one side of the road to the other. Uniformed children skipped happily home from school carrying books bound up in string. The air smelt faintly of jasmine washed with the ocean. The town was growing on me, but it would only take a day to change that around.

The backstreets and the alleyways.

Morning, and dull grey clouds hung low in the sky. It seemed to take me forever to get ready, have breakfast and push myself down to the Shore Temple, but eventually I made it. Luckily, I got there at a time when there were no other tourists and I had the place to myself for five minutes before more people came along from the continuous wave of buses that shuddered through the village.

The Shore Temple isn't big, but it's somehow impressive. Made from finely carved granite blocks in the 8th Century, its once delicate (but now weather beaten) effigies guard the same shoreline that was devastated by the 2004 tsunami. Intriguingly, that same tsunami uncovered several more monuments and shrines beneath the sea, indicating that the Shore Temple was only part of a larger, now submerged temple complex.

The Shore Temple.

Inside the temple.

The stones whisper...

As I was walking to the next sight of interest, a hawker tried to sell me an umbrella. I unwisely ignored him and started following a religious procession that wound through the country roads to an inconspicuous temple just outside the village. The villagers were carrying an effigy of a god that I couldn't make out. By now it had started to rain continuously and the sun block I had plastered all over my head and face was burning holes in my eyeballs. Additionally, I didn't want to leave walking boots outside the temple, so I trudged back in the ever thickening rain to dry off and change into sandals.

Whilst following the procession, I saw these three old goats.

On my second attempt to see the temples and monuments of Mamallapuram, the shopkeepers shouting "Hello!" as I walked past didn't sound quite so tuneful. I ignored them as usual and began to trudge down the road avoiding the mud and the slurry everywhere. Buses thrashed by throwing up pools of mud indiscriminately whilst auto-rickshaws mounted the village's pitiful attempt at pavement while they dodged and weaved every mud filled pothole.

As I approached the bus stand, a state bus roared straight down the middle of the road forcing an auto-rickshaw to throttle straight at me. I dodged it in balletic fashion and was rather pleased with myself until I looked down. Running over the edge of my sandals was a large mass of sticky, brown slurry. I was standing in a huge pile of sloppy shit. I could tell it was faeces from the look and the smell - but worst of all, from the texture. That's because it was now oozing beneath the soles of my feet.

I decided to be brave. I was a MAN! after all and I wasn't going to be stopped by a little bit of mud (as I had convinced myself). I would walk on regardless! The natives can do it, so can I!

I took two steps. The goo squished and slopped between my toes. I was walking on turd.

Fuck it!

Back to the hotel again - past the increasingly annoying shopkeepers.

Wash feet.

Wash sandals.

Curse and rant for a bit.

Go out yet again.

The shopkeepers tried calling me into their shops for a fifth time. I was not going to get angry. No. This was only the fifth fucking time I had ignored them today. And they didn't shout out to anyone else. Oh no. It was just me.

Approaching the stone carvings known as Arjuna's Penance (depicted below), a hawker approached me, trying to sell me something.

"No!" I barked, but he persisted and started following me down the street offering to be my guide. I was fucking furious. I turned to him with evil in my eye and with a low growl, spat the words, "I - SAID - NO!"

He was completely taken aback - dumbstruck - not because of the words, but because of the malicious intent behind them. For the first time that day, I felt fucking satisfied.

I stomped off up the hill. Everything here was rubbish. The caves were shit, the carvings were shit, the temples - all shit!

Arjuna’s Penance. Here, I was incandescent with rage.

Krishna’s butter ball – I was willing this to roll!

The Mahishasuramarthini cave temple – I shook my fists at him!

What the fuck was wrong with me? I started to become angry with myself for being angry. That's a hell of a conundrum to be faced with. I started feeling sorry for the guy I had just lambasted. As I walked aimlessly around the hillside, I realised I was spoiling things for myself. I sighed, cast off the inconsequential worries of the day, then started to relax and enjoy myself. I even thought about going back and hiring my potential guide.

Bas relief carving at the Mahishasuramarthini cave. I was enjoying myself by this time.

The lighthouse on the left and the lighthouse temple on the right. I climbed up to the latter – the views were superb.

I really wasn't being myself and I had to question why. As I gazed at the ancient caves carved into shrines for the gods of peace, fertility, wisdom or love, I wondered where the shrine of Rudra, the god of anger was. Why was I becoming so belligerent for no apparent reason? Over the next week, a number of incidents would happen where I would have to ask myself the same question. The answer, when it eventually came to me, was multifaceted and should have been obvious from the start.