Missing your target can be humiliating – and painful.

In Tamil Nadu, coffee comes milky, sweet and hot – so hot that it’s served with a spare cup, which Tamilians use to cool down the steaming liquid by performing a well-rehearsed ritual of pouring the coffee between the cups at speed. Imitate them with care.

We are in a steamy place even when we’re not negotiating beverages. The climate has three seasons: hot, hotter and hottest. The same goes for the food. This is India’s deep south: a generous land of swaying coconut groves, hillside spice plantations and terraces of wet rice paddy. It’s the heartland of undiluted Dravidian Hindu culture, untouched by the Mogul invasion or northern India’s Aryan Sanskrit culture.

The ancient temple towns dotted around the state date back to the great Chola and Pallava dynasties of the first millennium AD. They are still dominated by divine complexes of sacred halls, chambers and courtyards enclosed by mighty gopuram towers covered with gaudy abandon in a three-dimensional collage of Hindu deities.

And the food. Anywhere near a temple it is pure vegetarian and served thali style: a mound of steamed white rice on a banana leaf surrounded by spiced lentil dal; soupy sambar made with "drumsticks", the pods of the Moringa oleifera tree; fried vegetable poriyal; and kuzhambu, soups made with sun-dried vegetables and tamarind water or curd. Coconut milk curries are flavoured with patta (curry leaves), mustard seeds and cardamom, and there are countless varieties of thuvaiyal (chutneys) and kosumalli (salads). When you finish, the leaf is folded up and recycled as compost or cattle fodder.

South Indian food usually refers to the trinity of dosas, idlis and vadas – vegetarian fast food dishes from Tamil Nadu. They’re now served in restaurants all over India, but nowhere are they more fabulously tasty or served with as much variety and care as on the street corners, railway station platforms, seaside promenades and temples of their homeland.