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There is an inherent paradox to "finding peace in India". Few places seem to exist in a state of such perpetual turmoil, described so poignantly by Sir Kenneth Galbraith as "functioning anarchy." When you combine the blaring horns of trucks and buses with clanging temple bells, distorted PA systems and the frenetic activity of Indian street life, it is hard to imagine why anybody would go to India looking for peace. But thousands do. I did. Like so many before me, I went to India on a sort of pilgrimage, seeking something called "peace of mind".

With some trepidation, I decided to attempt my pilgrimage in the traditional manner - on foot. I had nurtured a naive fascination with nomadic lifestyles for many years; the simplicity and freedom of a peripatetic existence can seem very attractive when the pressures of a modern urban environment become too overwhelming. I was convinced that the meditative process of walking would help to resolve various inner conflicts, generating spontaneous "peace of mind". I also wanted to be exposed to as much of the country as possible; India was celebrating fifty years of independence and new policies of liberalisation were propelling rapid socio-economic changes. So, with little more than my passport, some money and a toothbrush, I set off from Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India, on a two thousand mile hike to Calcutta.

The realities hit home thick and fast. Any romantic notions about walking up the Coromandel coast were shattered on the second day. Elated by the news that I was following in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier, I struck off down the beach, barefoot and in buoyant mood. Within seconds I stepped in a pile of bright yellow excrement. The rest of the day was spent staggering through soft hot sand which dropped into the sea on such a steep gradient that I was walking like a one-legged wallaby. Rather than being soothed by a cooling sea breeze, I was lashed by strong gusts of burning, salty wind which swept small tornadoes of sand into my face every ten seconds. There was no sign of any people, any villages or any drinkable water. It was fiendishly hot. Apart from the odd grove of casuarinas, swaying on the top of steep sand banks, it was a pure desert which dropped into a raging cobalt sea. The only sign of life came after four hours when I found an emaciated, disease-ridden dog tugging at the sinewy remains of an upturned turtle.

Fortunately, days like this were rare. Most of the time I followed small country roads, where the incessant barrage of deafening horns on the national highways was replaced by a roadside chorus of "pen,pen,pen" from hordes of screaming children. Privacy is a rare commodity in India. The ever expanding population ensures that people spring up everywhere. Even when I paused on dirt tracks in remote hills, someone would invariably pop out from behind a bush and start babbling to me in local dialect. Ironically, prolonged moments of seclusion usually came when I reached big towns, where I was able to retire to the privacy of a hotel room, lock the door and wallow in the luxury of solitude. The peace and calm of rural areas would rarely last for long. The silence would soon be drowned by the Tannoy system from a local temple, blasting Vedic chants at full distortion. The congenital capacity of the population to withstand pulverising levels of fuzzy white noise never ceased to amaze me.

But India loves to be loud. In contrast to the hushed silence of Christian churches, the devotion and ritual in Hindu temples revolves around the stimulation of every sense; thumping drums combine with billowing incense and blazing torches in an intoxicating synasthesia. Religious festivals are typified by a psychedelic pandemonium which makes the techno-shamen of modern rave culture look like middle-aged Morris dancers. However, lurking beneath this kaleidoscopic veneer of divine weirdness, there is a sense of peace in India. Walking long distances through remote areas presented certain challenges - I got lost, sick and very thirsty - but it led me to parts of the country where the natural flow of traditional life remains untainted by the modern world.

Time stands still in the sea-washed tranquillity of Bheemunipatnam, a small coastal town in Andhra Pradesh. A clock tower, dating from 1863, dominates the centre of town, the hands stuck at twelve thirty and the face emblazoned with the words Made in London. The bell-tower is occupied by a flock of parakeets, which fly between the rustling leaves of surrounding banyan trees. Old women sell fruit from wooden trolleys, shaded from the sun by palm frond parasols, while barefoot fishermen wander up from the beach, their nets bursting with glinting silver fish. College girls drift through the narrow streets, like floating angels in dazzling white saris, and a whitewashed Catholic church, covered in terracotta tiles, stands in a garden of swaying palms and luminous tropical shrubs. The town sprawls across the base of a naked hill, overlooking a wide sweeping bay where a strip of windswept golden sand protects the still waters of a lagoon from tumbling, foaming waves. At the base of the hill, below a stark white Shiva temple flanked by frangipanis, the Old Jute Mill Guest House presides over the town like a royal palace. Wicker armchairs sit beneath a curved colonnade, poised above vistas of sand and sea opening up through splaying palms and the delicate branches of papaya trees. The high ceilings of spacious rooms support the sort of fans that rotate with a languid, comforting whir. At the time, it felt like heaven.

India engenders this sort of intensity. Every image glows in the vibrant clarity of celluloid and every reaction is accentuated by the environment. Travel is characterised by periods of being "in the flow", when everything happens with movie-like precision. Then there are days which turn into extended nightmares. Nothing works. Everybody is hassling you, cheating you or just being annoying. Every visitor to India experiences this to some degree; the harsh realities of the country cannot be hidden from the hermetically sealed bubbles created by tour operators. By walking everywhere, the almost schizophrenic oscillation between frustration and elation became increasingly pronounced. One minute I might be cursing truck drivers, their blaring horns and the endless procession of roadside defecators; then I would find myself wandering through the pastoral beauty of isolated villages, surrounded by an emerald sea of paddy fields, wondering what had happened to the twentieth century.

Sometimes this shift between rural and urban India was a struggle, a culture clash that felt more acute than the transition from Calcutta to London at the end of the trip. I felt that I was moving between two worlds, from the natural pace of rural life to the amplified rhythms of modern man. At the same time, the anachronistic images of modern India reveal the extent to which past and future are converging in a timeless present. Businessmen in Calcutta recline on man-powered rickshaws using cellular phones and almost every village I walked through had a satellite dish, enabling peasant farmers to feast their eyes on the delights of Baywatch and the Spice Girls bursting out of leotards on MTV. It is hard to imagine that the story-telling culture of the Mahabharata will continue to compete. But maybe it will. It was ironic to find that, while college kids all over the country are surfing the Internet, one village in Karnataka has reinstated sanskrit as the daily language. India continues to have an extraordinary capacity to adapt and absorb external influence yet remain peculiarly Indian. The Pepsi marketing team may have infiltrated the hill tribes of Orissa, but the images and icons from Hollywood blockbusters now mutate into material for Bollywood, Bombay's prolific film industry.

Economic liberalisation has brought a new prosperity to the urban middle classes but rural India is paying the price. The main roads are bordered by a network of linear settlements which are rapidly becoming an environmental disaster zone; petrochemicals mingle with industrial effluent, dead animals, chemical fertilisers and human excrement, all sloshing down the roadside in one gushing toxic sewer when the monsoon rains connect the surrounding water sources. The relentless search for firewood has denuded vast areas of forest, precipitating widespread soil erosion, while the unceasing demand for power has triggered the construction of huge hydro-electric dam schemes which have reduced some of the country's mighty rivers to sad trickles of polluted sludge. An average drop of Ganges water in Varanasi contains deposits of various heavy metals, together with arsenic, cyanide, human faeces and traces of half-burnt corpses. Thousands continue to drink it every day, convinced that it is the purest water in the world.

Words like purity, peace and harmony seem to take on different meanings in India. In a culture so obsessed with cleansing rituals and inter-caste pollution, it is hard to understand the basic approach to sanitation. There seems to be a collective consensus that certain things will never improve, a sort of mass neurosis sparked by an "it's-broken-but-why-try-and-fix-it" type of philosophy. Then again, maybe this passivity creates the sense of peace in India. It hangs within the anarchy and lets it function. Walking the length of the country had helped to erode my romantic preconceptions, exposing me to the pervasive squalor and peculiar charm that makes India such a blissful nightmare. At the same time, despite the surrounding sea of chaos, the natural pace and rhythm of walking did lead to lasting moments of inner silence, making me realise that when the mind goes quiet, when there are no thoughts, there is peace, which is ultimately what I was seeking.

Fact Box
Highlights:

The temple towns of Tamil Nadu, which sprawl along the banks of the Cauvery, the sacred river of the south, are the purest examples of traditional Vedic culture alive in India. The six hundred acre temple complex of Srirangam, on an island in the river near Trichy, is one of the largest and most spectacular in India. Heading towards the coast, you pass The Big Temple at Tanjore, the finest example of Chola architecture, then a profusion of temples in the area in and around Kumbakonam. The famous Natraj Shiva temple at Chidamabram, on the coast, is the most breathtaking experience of all. The puja ceremonies revolve around dramatic fire rituals and a background of thumping bass drums and clanging cymbals. The town is one of the best places in India to witness the festival of Shivarartri, the night of Shiva, which ususally takes place over the new moon in February. Further down the Coromandel coast is Vailankanni, a pilgrim town dedicated to the Virgin Mary but drawing pilgrims of every faith. All these towns have reasonable modern hotels, catering mainly to more affluent Indian pilgrims.

The French colonial town of Pondicherry, south of Madras, is an ideal place to recuperate from the pressures of Indian travel. The old part of town, with its grand houses, rooftop restaurants and seafront promenade, is almost eerily peaceful. The modern part of town is a mecca for fabric freaks - exquisite silks, cottons and saris at unbeatable prices. The utopian community of Auroville is just outside town and well worth a visit, especially to see the Matri Mandir, a vast spherical building that is finally nearing completion. Pondicherry and Auroville both offer a wide range of accommodation, although many are ownd by the Aurobindo ashram and impose puritanical conditions on its guests - no smoking, drinking or staying out after ten. About two hours up the coast is the small fishing port of Mahabalipuram, a centre for stone carved sculpture and full of excellent little seafood restaurants. The best place to stay is the Ideal Beach Resort, about four kilometres up the beach.

Bheemunipatnam is easily accesible from Vishakapatnam, a major port on the east coast of Andhra Pradesh, with direct flights from Calcutta and Bombay. To stay at the Jute Mill Guest House, write in advance to the Manager of the Jute Mill at Bheemunipatnam, Nr. Vishakapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India.

The Orissan town of Puri is one of the major pilgrimage destinations in India and comes alive every June with the famous Car festival, during which enormous wooden chariots are pulled through the streets. Those seeking instant salvation used to throw themselves under the wheels. The South Eastern Railway Hotel provides an eccentric colonial escape and makes an ideal base for exploring local beaches and the spectacular Sun Temple at nearby Konarak. Puri is easily accessible by plane and train from Calcutta.

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