In February of 2002, I was on a lecture tour of South India. At universities and other educational and cultural institutions in several cities, I was giving talks about the archeological evidence for extreme human antiquity documented in my book Forbidden Archeology. This evidence is consistent with accounts of a very ancient human presence on earth, found in the Vedas, the ancient Sanskrit writings of India. The talks were therefore popular with many Indian scholars and the general public.

In Chennai (as the city of Madras, the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, is now called), I had a couple of days off. On one of these free days, the tour organizers arranged for me to go to the ancient hilltop temple of Tirupati, visited by more people each year than any other temple in India. On another free day, I went to Kanchipuram, another important pilgrimage town in the state of Tamil Nadu. There I visited several ancient temples, such as the Varadaraja temple.