By Fergus Nicoll BBC correspondent on the road to Delhi

Stuck in the mud, assaulted by rap music, soaked by the rain. Is it all going wrong for the BBC's Fergus Nicoll on the campaign trail in India? Chapter two of his election notebook finds him in the state of Tamil Nadu, working his way up from the southern tip of Kanniyakumari to the temple town of Madurai.

It's been raining heavily all this week in Tamil Nadu - a welcome relief from the soaring temperatures of the past several weeks.

Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha - 'her matronly portrait is everywhere'

Even the holiday-makers on the beach at Kanyakumari don't seem down-heartened, wading into the surf and getting saris and shirts almost as wet from the downpour as from the salt water.

On the road north, it's easy to see that the farmers are quick to profit, throwing new crops into the wonderfully moist earth - keeping their fingers crossed that it won't be just a tantalising glimpse of the monsoon to come.

Belting along the 234-kilometre highway to Madurai - dodging between the crammed buses, the trucks with their towering, swaying loads of coconut fibre, the trundling Ambassador saloons, family-laden scooters and loose herds of buffalo - the rain-soaked scenery is lush and green.

We pass plains of coconut-palm orchards, meticulously barbered vegetable farms and the sudden, soaring hills of the Southern Ghats.

Then, looming out of the rain-clouds, an unexpected forest of - windmills. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them, turning stolidly in the hot rainy breeze, making the juice to feed local industry.

But be careful where you drive on these wind-farms; our inquiries landed us axle-deep in ochre mud, churning futilely until a group of friendly technicians emerged from nowhere to haul us out onto solid ground.

No escaping politics

Back on the road, the hoardings are always eye-catching: Thanalakshmi Radios, Nelli Silk Sarees and the commendably multi-skilled Pothys of Tirunelveli, offering "bakery, ice cream, sweets and tailoring".

And of course there's no escaping election politics.

Whole villages declare themselves for Tamil Nadu's charismatic chief minister, Jayalalitha, their walls plastered with strident slogans in red and yellow rolling curls of Tamil script - and big, matronly portraits of the AIA-DMK boss herself.

Power for the community on the edge of the Southern Ghats

Elsewhere, Congress party headquarters in Thirumangalam feature equally fleshy paintings of opposition leader Sonia Gandhi - while DMK posters boast the vaguely menacing figure of M Karunanidhi, who like all true film stars wears sun-glasses on all occasions.

And so we roll into Madurai.

Some things have changed. We didn't have internet cafes when I studied in Tamil Nadu back in 1985; Tamil music wasn't contaminated by rap.

Some things, mercifully, remain the same. Despite a few modern concrete towers, the vast Meenakshi Temple still dominates the city skyline.

The great festival of Chithrai may be over but the pilgrims still come in their tens of thousands and the priests are on hand in the holy precincts to make them welcome. And the rain continues to fall.