Prior to this it is said that he sailed to China but failed to make inroads and returned across the Bay

Prior to this, it is said that he sailed to China, but failed to make inroads and returned across the Bay of Bengal. Deep in the suburbs, the Church of Our Lady of Health is a neat, prim place that conceals a cave. It was here that Thomas lived, while he conducted worship at the fine beach two miles east.You can tell you are getting close to the correct location, because extravagant tableaux of Christ and miscellaneous apostles punctuate a horizon that would otherwise be full of the billboards and smog that characterise many Indian cities.In return for a decent donation to church funds, a gregarious old man - appropriately named Joseph - will guide you around the grotto and explain the significance of the rock where the saint prayed (evident, he says, from what appear to be a pair of paw marks gouged out of it); the miraculous opening that allowed him to escape when troops sent by the local rajah cornered him; and the footprint, now the size of an elephant's hoof, branded onto the rock from which he took his single bound to freedom.Close by, on a hill close to the present-day airport, he was finally captured and killed with that evil lance - though at least one account maintains his death was an accident caused by a huntsman's stray arrow.His remains are said still to be in the city, in a crypt just below the altar of San Thome Cathedral - a fine, airy church that provides welcome sanctuary from the fervent city outside. "This pillar", reads the inscription, "was brought from San Thome, Madras.

A piece of the iron of the lance with which St Thomas the Apostle was supposed to have been killed was preserved in the small niche at the top of the pillar." It was natural that the Portuguese would bring some token back from the place of Thomas' death to the archbishopric for the entire sub-continent, Old Goa.No metal remains, but the detour is rewarding for the glimpses of a once- great city now melting back into the encroaching jungle.Across in Chennai, the city has well and truly encroached upon the place where Thomas is thought to have preached and been martyred in AD72. In the cloisters adjoining the church of St Francis, sandwiched between an Islamic inscription and a Hindu hero, you discover a small shrine dating from 1630. During their rule, the colonials dismantled the original capital, stone by stone, to create the present city, Panjim. But the demolition squads left the religious buildings in a city that looks as though it has been hit by a holy neutron bomb - only the religious buildings survive. But the diligent seeker after Thomas will take a short diversion north to the museum in Old Goa. This Portuguese colony endured much longer than Cochin - it was surrendered by Lisbon only in 1961. He eventually reached the Bay of Bengal at present-day Chennai - the city formerly known as Madras - around AD58.Even today, the journey is a tricky 500 miles across the high Western Ghats, on railways that would challenge the average tank engine.

And most fascinating of all, the original globetrotting apostle: St Thomas Didymus. Twenty years after the crucifixion, he spread the gospels into Asia.From the west coast of India, it is thought he evangelised his way across the southern tip of the sub-continent. The Carling Premier League saints - gospel-writing Matthews, Marks, Lukes, Johns, plus gifted paragons like Peter, Paul and Patrick - lord it over a whole raft of Nationwide League-level martyrs. As in football, so in religion; this latter group, with notables like Christopher, Michael and Swithin, tends to be much more interesting. Fragments of their community remain, but the main reason most tourists come here is for a serene cruise through the backwaters of Kerala.

Invest 12 rupees - about 15 pence - and you can spend three hours on a ferry that wafts through a landscape rather like the Norfolk Broads, but with elephants and rice fields.It may seem inappropriate to reduce the New Testament to the level of English football, but it helps explain my interest in St Thomas. They, and he, were followed to the sub-continent by a community of Syrian Orthodox Christians, who settled south of Cochin in the town of Kottayam. The Jewish community in Cochin is thought to have reached India from Palestine even ahead of St Thomas. Despite St Thomas being written out of the local story, those on his trail should start in Cochin, not least because it forms a great introduction to the religious and cultural multiplicity of India.Here is a Hindu shrine within a Portuguese-Dutch palace; an array of Chinese fishing nets that hang like giant bats' wings, waiting to dip down and sweep up the day's catch; and a beautiful, atmospheric synagogue.There is still a tiny community of Jews in Cochin, whose place of worship boasts a floor of exquisite Chinese tiles and an air of quiet dignity. Later, the church was requisitioned by the Anglicans following Britain's takeover of India. But at least one facet of the original has survived: the tomb of the Portuguese navigator.Vasco da Gama died in Cochin in 1524 and his remains were interred here for 14 years before being moved back to Lisbon.