In 2003 my wife was invited to India to open an autism clinic in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. We flew into Madras where we also spent our first night. Unfortunately, our hotel was terrible (too terrible to go into details on this site) and with the monsoon in full sway, it all added up to a fairly miserable first 24 hours on the Subcontinent. These six pictures – capture something of the general melancholy (if not the aroma) – especially the one of Dido waiting in the hotel dining room for our taxi to arrive to take us to a coastal resort for a three-day holiday.