Warning: now contains new and improved sweary words.

I set out from Trivandrum early to visit the southernmost tip of India; Kanyakumari. I had originally intended to visit here whilst travelling through Tamil Nadu, but I ran out of time and had to return to Bangalore for Samba’s wedding. Now I had booked a taxi through the hotel to take me there and back, and although the driver didn't speak a great deal of English, I could tell he was a stoic, dependable person. Given that, on the road he was a fucking manic.

The first stop on the way was Padmanabhapuram Palace just south of the Kerala state border in Tamil Nadu.

Built for the Travancore kings more than five hundred years ago, this is the largest surviving wooden palace in India. At first glance, it looks a bit rubbish, but go inside and the hundreds of rooms all leading off from tight, maze-like corridors with polished floors and immaculately carved and decorated wooden struts and beams and this place springs to life with intrigue.

Designed successfully to keep out the oppressive heat of the sun, it would also have potential attackers lost within seconds, giving the royals and their entourage who knew it an immense advantage as there are many trap doors leading off to secret passageways and underground chambers.

The detailed carving on the ceilings, walls and windows is a highlight.

Ornately carved ceiling beam.

The throne room alone has 90 flowers carved into the ceiling - every one different. There is also a lamp that hangs from a chain here that has a no longer used mechanism that always keeps it pointing in the same direction. The fastidiousness of past kings all over the world has surely brought about some wonderful, if obsolete inventions. Such as peasant scissors – used to cut peasants in half if they got out of hand. Actually, that would have been my contribution to civilisation had I been a mediaeval king.

Outside, numerous courtyards contain meticulously tended plants and trees and a stone carved Royal Temple.

I wasn't in the mood for traipsing around Padmanabhapuram Palace at the time and found it all a bit dull. I was getting sick of walking around in bare feet and the day was overcast with drizzle. In other words, I was in a right old mood. Only in hindsight, remembering the detail in the place and looking at the numerous pictures I took do I realise how great a site this was. It wasn't swarming with tourists and was set in beautiful surroundings at the foot of a mountain. Definitely worth a visit.

Outside, I waited while the driver went to bring his car to me as it had started raining. A fruit seller started screaming at me from across the road, "Sir, sir, come here, please! Please! PLEASE!"

He started shouting the last in a high pitched voice over and over, and then started chuckling, knowing how annoying he was being. Sure, I don't mind juggling five melons, ten pineapples and innumerable jackfruit for the rest of the day. In fact I would gladly have bought a pineapple off him just to shove it up his arse the wrong way.

We drove through the end of the Western Ghats (a sprawling series of hills and mountains that stretches down from Mumbai) to reach Kanyakumari. It was a lovely drive, though some of the scenery was spoilt by various ugly hotels perched along low lying cliffs that looked like they had been designed and built by Lego.

The Western Ghats.

Kanyakamri itself is an unremarkable town awash with pilgrims and a few tourists. The pilgrims come to visit the temple and to bathe in the sacred waters. I headed straight for the harbour, as the southernmost point of India is actually on one of two islands just off the coast.

Now this may sound odd, but I’ve always been fascinated by capes. Not the kind you wear, but the termination points of land masses. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always wanted to visit these points in Africa, India and South America because to me they feel like “the ends of the earth” that inspired awe and wonder in so many adventurers of the past. So Visiting Kanyakumari was like an adventure for me. When I got there I immediately made for the ferry, not so much to reach the islands, but so I could look back on the tip of India.

On one island is a huge statue of Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar erected in 2000. It reminded me of the statue of Talos from the classic movie Jason and the Argonauts which scared me to death as a child. I had to keep looking over at it to make sure it wasn’t moving.

On the main island is a memorial to one of India’s most important religious philosophers of the 19^th Century, Vivekananda.

This island also harbours the southernmost point of India. Standing here looking back at the land I had travelled for more than six weeks, I felt calm and at peace. The quality of the light here is amazing. Everything shines. To the far right, a huge swarm of distant wind turbines produce free electricity for the Indian grid. In my opinion, it looks both elegant and technically amazing.

As your eyes sweep along the coast you can see the distant mountains, the bright white church near the waterfront, hotels and businesses of the town, the ferry port and a small rocky islet. The Arabian Sea is to the left, the Bay of Bengal to the right and the Indian Ocean is behind you. It’s the end of the world!

Before leaving town I went for a thali at a well known hotel restaurant in town. When it was delivered to me, the whole thing was stone cold, completely uncooked. I motioned for the waiter to come over and I said to him that the food was cold. He shook his head negatively, but I repeated that it hadn’t been cooked. He looked confused for a second, touched the bowls to feel if there was any heat, and then with the funniest face-saving comment I’ve ever heard, said, “Oh, so do you want it hot then sir?” as if thalis were meant to be served cold and I was the one who was mistaken. Brilliant!

At the end of the meal, I requested the bill in international sign language. When the waiter collected my payment, he looked eager for a tip, so I gave him one. In international sign language.

On the way out of town we stopped at the Suchindram Temple . I didn’t go inside because we didn’t have much time and also men have to take off their shirts. Frankly, if I had done that, they would have thought I was an incarnation of Hanuman, the Hindu Monkey God. Or perhaps just a stray monkey.

Men contemplating outside the temple.

The drive back to Trivandrum was a scream, and I was doing all the screaming. The driver was desperate to get back before sunset, and people, cows and other vehicles were not going to get in his way. Luckily, I managed to capture some of the more sedate moments. I’ve given the driver the voice of a London cabbie just for a laugh.

Although I had booked myself into a four star business hotel in Thanjavur, the quality of the service left something to be desired. Now let's get one thing straight - I'm no snob, even though my opening sentence makes me sound like one. But the restaurants in these places charge big prices for absolutely no advantage whatsoever. The best restaurants are the simple "Ready Meals" places you find all over India. The service is relaxed but friendly, the food is nearly always top notch, they know exactly what they're doing and they do it well.

To be as informative as possible, here are some of the things you can expect to happen in hotel restaurants in India; some annoying and some downright stupid. All of them have happened to me.

Filling your tea/coffee cup to the brim so that even putting a spoon in makes it spill.

Splashing cola into a glass so that it fizzes up over the edge and spills onto your crotch.

Delivering the wrong order, or an order with missing items (the latter is very common).

Being served mashed potatoes that were in fact lumps of hard potato in some strange, creamy goo. This may seem minor until you understand that in the UK, mash is not mash until each piece of potato is hammered until it is molecule sized.

Being given "vegetable sweet and sour" at an exorbitant price that consisted purely of a pot of sauce.

Being delivered a completely uncooked and cold meal (that one was priceless).

Being asked to separate beans on toast into two items by the waiter only for the chef to complain to me that they are only one item.

Having my plate grabbed away from me whilst I have a knife and fork in my hands and am still chewing (very common all over India - efficiency being mistaken for good waitering).

Having to wait twenty five minutes for my change only to be intentionally short changed as they didn't have the money to give me.

Being served diarrhoea on a plate with a side order of gastroenteritis and trapped wind (on an English menu that would read, "Jus d'arse en papillote with bactéries and an air de merde coulis").

By the way, baked beans in India are rank. They are imported from Yemen and the sauce is as thick, salty and vinegar filled as Lidl Ketchup. Ok, so I'm a snob about baked beans. And ketchup.

So, getting back to this particular hotel, the previous evening I had ordered room service a good half an hour before the kitchen closed only to be told later that they were too busy to make my food and only had cold sandwiches available. The next morning, breakfast had been delivered with missing items. One waiter strode over to me and demanded payment whilst I was still waiting for them. I asked politely if the breakfast was complimentary if you stayed in the attached hotel, and he became very rude and agitated as he demanded payment again, as if I were about to do a runner.

"Wait just a moment," I said, taking on an invented air of subdued outrage, "I'm still waiting for my paratha and coffee. Just who the hell do you think you are?" He immediately apologised and slinked into a corner, but the food didn't come for another 40 minutes during which time the restaurant emptied and a thousand waiters bumbled around the room pretending to be busy whilst looking extremely uncomfortable. I didn't get too angry, having discovered the day before where all my pent up rage was coming from.

I walked down the main thoroughfare to the Brihadishwara Temple, Thanjavur's main claim to fame. This huge monolithic complex was built one thousand years ago by a Chola dynasty king (Rajaraja I - what a great name) - more of a sign of his power than his faith. Nevertheless it was hugely impressive.

I took off my sandals and left them at the first gopura entrance (Brihadishwara unusually has two).

These marvellous gates lead into a massive courtyard filled with smaller structures, but dominated by the main temple.

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As I was walking around, I started chatting to a group of students from the local Insurance College. They were great fun, and were interested about my experiences in India so far - and especially Tamil Nadu. Obviously, they demanded to have their picture taken with me as is the custom, and I had one taken too.

After exploring the complex, I stepped inside the great hall where a long queue of people were waiting patiently to see its hidden treasures. The roped off queue ran for about twenty metres in front of me, with people five or six abreast until it disappeared through a narrow doorway. Large chariot wheels and bronze shields leaned against the walls on either side, surrounded by a profusion of carvings.

Rivulets of sweat dripped from my brow and down my back. It was hot and clammy in here (despite a number of ceiling fans haphazardly tacked to the roof with the most bizarre electrical wiring system I've ever seen). Then a bell rang and the huge outer doors banged shut.

That's when things started to change.

People started to get excited, surging forward or standing on their toes, raising their hands in the air and gesturing wildly. Parents lifted their children into the air. People gasped or chanted.

I wasn't in a large hall - this was the inner sanctum housing the main shrine.

I really didn't know what to do. Here I was, a foreigner - effectively an outcast in Hindu terms - intruding on what I would later learn is a puja ceremony - a revealing of the lingam (or statue of the god Shiva). The doors were closed from the outside, I had no effective means of escape, but I decided to just wing it. After all, nobody seemed to mind too much: I was letting everyone barge past me. Having said that, by now they were all in such a state of bewildered exultation that they wouldn't have noticed Osama Bin Laden wearing a backpack in the same queue. When I reached the shrine, the priest stared at me knowingly with a little glint in his eye, but still gave me a blessing. Of course I wasn't the first idiot to make this mistake, and I silently thanked him for being so gracious.

The Temple Complex.

I left the temple and returned to the place where I'd dropped my sandals. They were gone. I searched around methodically, in case they had been moved or I had missed them somehow. Nope. I checked a third time to make sure.

Bugger - they'd been thieved!

I know they had been stolen as they were quite distinct and weren't easily mistaken for other sandals around them. I wandered out to the street in bare feet, the hot stone searing my skin. I jumped into an auto and asked the driver to take me to a nearby shoe shop where I bought more sandals. He took me back to the hotel - the whole journey being less than a kilometre and worth about 30 rupees. I asked him how much he wanted and he said it was up to me. This is what auto drivers say to green tourists, expecting a fortune in return. I gave him 100 and he demanded 300. Cheeky shitbag. I told him it was more than a fair price and left him dithering in the road.

I didn't mind my shoes being stolen - to be honest, I was half expecting it at some point. It reminded me of Slumdog Millionaire - I'm sure some of the local kids grabbed them. Anyway, everyone is guilty of having stolen something at some point in their life - even if it's just a pen from work. Show me someone who claims to have never stolen anything and I will show you both a thief and a liar. Mind you, if it had been my wallet or mobile, I would have been running down the street naked and covered in blood with the thief's head on a pole.

The next day I set off to Madurai via taxi. It was a long, tiring drive through villages with dusty roads that looked like England would have looked 200 years ago. The countryside again was very reminiscent of verdant England - apart from the palm trees. Maybe I was missing home a little.

The familiarity of the bustling Indian town of Madurai swept any nostalgia I had aside. Here were the usual cars and autos crammed onto busy streets, mopeds with whole families and their dog astride a single seat and water buffalo - a kind of low caste cow - dragging carts laden with just about anything you can imagine.

I had been trying to book a flight back to Bangalore for my mate Samba's wedding, but my credit card kept getting refused by Kingfisher Airlines (I hope the pilot's aren't paid in beer) and I was seriously worried about getting back in time. This was why my schedule was so tight in Tamil Nadu. Luckily, the hotel I ended up in - the GRT Residency - turned out to have the most professional staff in India. Not only did they arrange everything for me including a car to the airport, they didn't slap on a huge fee like some other places I'd been to. And their restaurant was superb - including the service. It's great when you find a place that takes all the stress out of your stay. I just wish I had stayed longer than one night.

The Shri Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar temple in Madurai was huge. It has the largest gopuras of any temple in India (there are twelve in all surrounding the complex), and is one of the holiest sites for Hindus on a pilgrimage in Tamil Nadu.

This gopura is huge.

The array of statues is almost overwhelming.

This statue particularly caught my eye.

Inside there are many long, wide corridors leading off to various shrines, and a central space that contains thousands of statues and carvings. Bright, lavish mosaics sear the eyes as you pass by with their bewildering array of colourful images. Small shrines cut into the walls host carved images of Shiva and Meenakshi strangely dressed in light clothing and embroidered gold. The temple overwhelms with the number of different images it houses. There are many touts attempting to act as guides too. One young man approached me in an empty corridor at one end of the temple and asked for money. Then he said how much he wanted - an extortionate amount - claiming he was a guide though he could barely speak English. I said, "You've just blown it for being too greedy mate," and walked off leaving him running after me shouting, "Master! Master!" which made me feel even worse.

The labyrinthine passageways were dimly lit and with such an array of artworks sprouting from every corner, it was easy to get lost. The central enclosure where all the corridors seemed to meet was packed with pilgrims. Lovely, carved stone colonnades supported the roof, huge statues in black and silver lined the central walkway. The air was heavy with incense and excitement. Here, devotees of Vishnu prostrated themselves on the floor with such expressive fervour that I found it both remarkable and disquieting.

A large tank - a storage area for water considered holy - was part of the complex and allowed some amazing views of the surrounding gopuras. The tank was painted in red and white vertical stripes giving it an odd air of football tribalism, but I couldn't see any Sunderland supporters pissing in the water or trying to topple the statues.

Outside the temple, all sorts of touts and scammers were constantly following me in the street. One followed me around for five minutes, trying to force me into some flower market while I repeatedly said no, after which I completely ignored him. He persisted until I turned around angrily and told him to fuck off. Most of the others - there were nine in all - were trying to lure me into various handicraft emporiums with promises of exquisite views of the temple.

Single males are particularly targeted by touts, single women not quite so much (as the touts who are always men seem to think they don't have the same spending power) and couples are approached cautiously for fear that the man will physically defend his wife or girlfriend's space.

The touts spoiled Madurai for me. I wonder if they realise that they are driving custom away, as many foreigners return home to tell their friends, "Don't bother with India - you get constantly hassled." I've seen that remark so many times in travel forums it saddens me. Eventually, you just get used to it, but for someone on a two or three week visit, I can understand their frustration.

In order to really get beneath the skin of a tout, you have to understand that trading is written in the blood of this nation. Various tribal Indian Kings were trading silk, spices and other goods with the Persians, the Egyptians, the Chinese and later the Romans long before any of the countries in the UK even existed. Six thousand years of haggling and bartering has etched itself into the collective psyche of India and it can still be felt in the dusty bazaars up and down the country; the calls and pleas of the stall holders and shopkeepers, the grabbing and hounding of the hawkers. But this same drive to make a good sale and to provide for the family - whatever it takes - is so different from the subtle psychological manipulations of the West, where soft lighting, soothing music and delicious smells pervade every shopping mall. In India, the drive to make a sale is guttural and in your face. I have to admit that I can still get annoyed by it all.

On the plane back to Bangalore, I could see all of India spread out before me, a vast array of twinkling lights reflecting the stars above. At one point a vast swathe of them blinked out as if a whole land mass had sunk beneath the sea. Yet another infernal power cut! I gasped and laughed at the same time, but my thoughts weren't of how little things work in India. Seeing the huge array of communities all lit up in the land of a billion people, the clouds of diesel fumes clogging the air as people darted to and from the villages and towns below, thinking of everyone talking to each other across the country on vast mobile networks, I realised how amazing it was that so much did work most of the time.

My mind drifted back to those worshippers in the temple - their devotion contorting their faces in wild extremes of emotion. It all seemed so real to them and so alien to me - it made me wonder just how real their beliefs were.

I had learned many stories of the Hindu gods in my travels through Tamil Nadu. Hinduism has tales associated with each god – their feats, their trials, their emotions, their battles and their triumphs. All of these stories relate and intertwine to reveal a canon of work that sets examples of how people should behave in any given situation. This is at the core of all religions - the Bible and the Quran are full of simple wisdom derived from parables such as these.

The great Hindu mystery - the Dance of Maya - which ultimately states that the physical world is an illusion, but the spiritual world is real is also a core belief at the heart of every major religion in the world, including Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. The physical world is unimportant - merely an illusion or preparation for the next life.

On the other hand, the pragmatists believe that reality is all things material - nothing else.

So what is reality? What is truth? Most people would say it is what we can all agree on - the sun rises every day and the waters run to the sea. It is everything we can prove through a common understanding and shared experience. But there lies the problem. We all perceive things differently - everyone has a slightly different version of the world around them as seen through their own eyes. So we invent objective languages such as mathematics to describe the world around us, but even then, every mathematical description still needs to be interpreted by each one of us. The history of science is littered with the ghosts of failed theorems because of disagreements in interpretation.

Then there is faith. It seems everybody believes or worships something. For some it is a god, for others, logic - even Richard Dawkins has himself to worship. You only need to read a book on string theory to realise that there is as much faith in our current scientific understanding of the universe as there is a faith in a god or gods. Ultimately, faith is what allows us to plug the gaps in our knowledge of things we may never understand.

So everything boils down to the fact that we each have a different view of what is real. There is no single truth; reality is a myriad of thoughts, hopes and dreams hung upon a physical framework of matter. This is something I embrace. Each of us has the capacity to feel and think for ourselves, to understand and interpret as we wish. This is the rich tapestry that makes up all our lives. It's what makes the world such an interesting and lively place - and sometimes a cruel and despicable one. But most importantly, every different thought and belief is made possible because the universe we inhabit allows it. If we lived in a universe that did not allow it, I would not be writing these words and you would not be interpreting them. All of our emotions, thoughts and dreams are as real as the coffee cup sitting in front of me, because they happen to be part of the universe. They guide our decisions, they direct our actions and they shape our futures. We would not have cast our eyes to new horizons and left those ancient African savannahs if we did not feel the urge to explore; we would never have architected great cities had we not planted the seeds of their design in our minds and we would never have gone to the moon had we not first dreamed it possible.

Maybe religion has got it wrong after all. Instead of all reality being an illusion, perhaps all illusion is reality.

Next time, it's back to the cock gags and toilet humour as I return to Bangalore, go to a great wedding then do absolutely nothing for four days.

“Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.”

Albert Einstein.

I left Mamallapurum for Pondicherry, a former French colonial town a hundred miles south of Chennai. I clambered onto a state bus, but it was packed, so I scrambled off again, my backpack nearly disembowelling a female Chinese backpacker behind me as I did so.

I waited for the next bus, but a nearby cab driver convinced me to go with him instead. Actually, he was no cab driver, just an opportunist with a beat up old car. Nevertheless, I did it on the spur of the moment. Twenty minutes out of town, he stopped and got out, looking at the engine forlornly. I stayed in the car. I didn't know this guy - he could drive away with my bags if he wanted to. Then he started muttering into his mobile. The engine had simply overheated. He waited for it to cool down, then we started off again.

The journey went like this for a while - every twenty minutes or so we would stop and let the engine cool. Eventually we made it to a mechanic. The mechanic looked at the engine for a moment, then started tugging, tapping and unscrewing. He took a hammer and chisel to the engine block at one point, pulling away radiator pipes, air cooling tubes and anything he thought may be loose. He didn't once check the oil. However, I'm convinced he knew exactly what he was doing in his own haphazard way.

His apprentices were extremely amusing. He had two young lads working for him, and they wanted to look knowledgeable in front of an audience. Whenever the mechanic wasn't there they would come up and tap one of the loose pipes, or bow and listen to the silent engine as if it would whisper its ailment to them. Whenever the mechanic came back, he would brush them aside like annoying flies and they would try to give off an air of knowing kinship with him which simply didn't exist.

We eventually made it to Pondicherry even though the engine had not been fixed. As things turned out, the journey would be more eventful than the destination.

I walked out of the hotel into the midday sun. I'm not an Englishman, so make of that what you will. I strolled into town, gazing at the elm lined avenues, the run down colonial buildings and wonder upon wonders - a stretch of unbroken pavement.

Pondicherry (or Puducherry to give it it's new non-colonial name) originally grew up in the 2nd century as a Roman trading post with the Far East, but it was the French who really left their mark in the 18th century. Today the shuttered windows and leaning gables of the buildings, the central boulevard and the inescapable French street names leave testament to their colonisation, though personally I found little of the French flavour left. Although a fairly pleasant resort town, it had little to offer me. Even the ashram in Auroville which is world famous for its meditation, yoga and spiritual teachings held no attraction for me. Let's face it, I have a brain that won't switch off, if I want to put my legs behind my head I'll jump off a cliff and there is nothing anybody can teach me about spirits.

As I strolled down the Promenade watching Indian families sit and chat on the thin stretch of red sand, I did feel relaxed. The waters from the Bay of Bengal can be quite rough and the waves crashing on the black, rocky beach helped me to ignore the omnipresent hawkers with their maps and bongos. A large statue of Mahatma Ghandi cheered me too. I don't have heroes, but the Mahatma comes pretty damn close - who else could have dreamed that the British ruling class were so used to beating the recalcitrant common man that they had no stomach to hit people who would not retaliate?

Ghandi’s statue.

The Bay of Bengal: and a really precious commodity in India: a public litter bin.

The next day I was feeling lazy, so I hired a taxi to take me to Kumbakonam, around sixty miles South of Pondicherry, for 1100 rupees. This is like hiring a taxi to take you from Central London to Peterborough for £15. The journey opened my eyes to rural life in India. Here, from the comfort of an air conditioned taxi, I could see the real poor of India, uneducated children working in the field, grizzled beggars with gaunt cheeks, missing appendages and milky eyes, squalid huts lining the roadside with palm fronds bedecking the roof and fires burning inside. And yet even in this poverty, there was a real palpable sense of community. It was a four hour drive down some horrendous roads and we stopped a few times along the way, and the local people went about their daily lives, chatting, joking and enjoying each other’s company. This only reaffirmed my belief that life is about what you do and who you are, not what you own. For instance, all I currently own is a beaten up backpack, some meagre clothes and a huge bank vault filled with bank bonuses, blood diamonds and Nazi gold.

Kumbakonam is not on the usual tourist trail. It's a standard Indian working town which contains the central business district for the region. However, it also has a number of temples; some old, some not so old. I decided to go there on impulse to get off the tourist trail and I'm glad I did. I checked into the Hotel Chela listed in my 2002 guidebook as being bright and clean, but it was now tired and worn. It was only £10 for the night though, so it was as good a place as any to get my head down.

Next day I headed straight for the eight hundred year old Sarangapani Temple which I had singled out as I was on a tight schedule. Approaching it is impressive. A large gopura tower (entrance gateway) shields the temple from prying eyes. The gopura is decorated with hundreds of statues of various gods in different forms, all painted in bright kingfisher colours. The temples of Tamil Nadu are distinct from those in the rest of the country - as are the people who originally populated it, the Dravidians, who first arrived in southern India six thousand years ago. Nobody is sure quite where they came from, but their language and architecture was quite distinct.

I removed my shoes at the entrance as is custom, and paced reverently through the gates. This is a working temple and I did feel slightly like a gatecrasher at a party. The outer halls were painted with bright and vibrant murals and old religious artefacts lined the aisle which led deeper into the temple. As I reached the entrance to the inner enclosure, an official looking man in a white robe waved me away, whispering, "Not allowed."

I had no problem with this - I was only a visitor here after all.

I wandered in the direction the cleric had waved me and headed out into the enclosed yard surrounding the temple. It was quite peaceful here and afforded an amazing view of the complex.

The yard led me back into the temple on the opposite side to where I had walked out. Here stood the man who had barred my entry.

"Not allowed," he repeated as I made my way to leave.

"I understand - I'm completely respectful of your customs," I replied, feeling slightly sheepish.

Then he muttered something low under his breath and surreptitiously waved for me to follow him. I didn't like this at all - especially if I was right about what he had just whispered - "A hundred rupees."

I quietly left the building.

I wandered around outside mulling over what had just happened. It didn't seem right. I pulled out my phone to call my friend Sairama and ask his advice, but a tall, portly policeman interrupted me by staring at my phone. I had met him earlier walking down the street and he had given me directions.

I asked him if it was usual for clerics to ask for donations inside the temple. At this point, another plainly dressed man turned up and the cop said a few words to him after which they both laughed. I took this as a bad sign - their body language indicated they were laughing at my naivety.

I said my farewells and started to walk back to the hotel.

As I was walking, something clicked in my head. I was going to miss seeing the inside of this beautiful old temple - something I had travelled many miles for - because someone was trying to scam me for a few rupees. And how dare that man charge somebody to enter a holy place. What a vile thing to do. Fuck it - I was going to find the little shit and show him up for the sacrilegious little thief he was. I turned on my heels and strode back to the temple. All thought left my head except for my newfound purpose. I was going to find him, stare him in the eye and confront him. I didn't know exactly what I was going to say, but I was confident that the right words would come at the right time.

I walked purposely back into the outer hall full of fire in my belly. There at the entrance to the inner courtyard where the trickster had stood was a small, kindly looking old man dressed in official robes. My thief was nowhere to be seen. The old man didn't even glance as I walked into the inner enclosure. My fraudulent cleric had obviously fled when he saw me leave thinking I was going to find the real cleric.

Inside, I didn't enter the shrine itself - a walled vault within the enclosure - as I didn’t want to barge in and intrude like an ignorant, wide-eyed tourist. The shrine of any temple is generally considered a private space for Hindus only.

The enclosure harboured beautiful ink-black sculptures of Vishnu, who the temple is dedicated to, and his various incarnations lined the outer walls. The temple possessed a strange mystical quality that is born of its architecture and of the hundreds of years of reverence shown to the place. In one corner, carved colonnades of dark wood held up a roof that systematically allowed the sun to shine through at regular intervals in almost solid beams of light. Reliefs of horses and elephants adorned the walls of the inner shrine. The air smelled musty and sweet; damp and incense harmonising in the air. The sense of calm was powerful, immediately washing away all my annoyances. This building held a certain power in its unique architecture and for me possessed an emotional resonance that I was to find in no other temple.

I left Kumbakonam feeling very happy; the town had been good to me. There were no hawkers or beggars and the people were disarmingly friendly. Apart from that one blip in the temple, I had found a place that I would definitely visit again if I was in the region.

As I made my way to the bus stand, it started raining. I trudged the muddying streets burdened with the weight of my backpack. A teenager caught sight of me and immediately got on his mobile phone to his friends. Then he started following me. I knew this because I double backed a couple of times trying to find the right direction, and he was still on my tail, talking all the while. This can be disconcerting the first time it happens, but it occurs quite often in smaller towns where tourists are infrequent. A certain excitement is stirred up by the sighting of a foreigner. People will ask for their picture to be taken with you. It's actually quite endearing. However, there is a scam operating in some the larger  cities where people will surround you to have a photograph taken and pick your pocket while doing so.

Eventually I found the bus which was packed, plonked myself in the last available seat in the middle of the back row and watched while paddy fields and rickety villages sped by at the speed of light. Travelling on a state bus in the back seat is not a wise move. As it thunders over holes in the road, you are literally thrown into the air, and your rear end pays a heavy toll. But I still had lots of things to ponder as I travelled.

My old friend Mr. Anger had popped in to visit me again after only two days. And in hindsight, the whole incident seemed exaggerated. Okay, so the guy had tried to scam me out of a small sum of money - in a temple no less - but did it really deserve the kind of anger I only reserve for when I see a real injustice being done? I knew the answer was no, but still couldn't work out why anger was plaguing me. Was it culture shock still lingering in the back of my mind after two weeks, making me feel vulnerable and defensive? Perhaps. Was encroaching middle age finally catching up with me? Never! And then it hit me like a gut punch from a heavyweight boxer. The last time I had been this consistently angry was twenty five years ago when my dad died. It's one of the inescapable stages of grief. It's hard enough losing someone you love, but the feeling of powerlessness it leaves with you invokes anger on a grand scale. You rage against a universe that allows us the freedom and exquisite beauty of self awareness and at the same time the bitter realisation that everyone we know and love will one day die. And there is nothing any of us can do about it. In that sense, anger is justified and I know it will rumble on for a good while to come. But at least I know what is at the core of my mood swings.

The bus jolted me out of my reverie. As we rolled into Thanjavur, I caught sight of the main temple in the distance and my jaw dropped.

It was huge!

It was beautiful!

Again, it was huge!

Did I mention its size?

I incarcerated myself in a quality business hotel and slept soundly, knowing that my temple visit the next day would be something quite special, but not knowing that it would eventually lead me to question the very nature of reality itself.

(Now that's a cliffhanger!)

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.