The menu at the Amman Rooftop Cafe, just outside Tiruvannamalai, has been adapted to suit the palate of the increasing numbers of Westerners seeking spiritual nourishment in this small southern Indian pilgrimage town, writes Róisín Ingle

The veggie burger, a new item, has even met with the approval of a locally based Texan guru who goes by the name of Arunachala Ramana. Every other evening a yellow auto-rickshaw arrives at Arunachala's ashram with sizeable orders of the tinfoil-wrapped burgers, a welcome fast-food dinner for him and his devotees.

Indian pilgrims have been coming to this spot in the state of Tamil Nadu, a mile or so south of the rapidly growing town and about 50 miles south of Madras, for thousands of years. They come for Arunachala hill, a sacred granite mount with a picturesque triangular peak that according to legend is a form of the Hindu god Shiva. They come to sit and meditate at Ramanashram, a centre established to accommodate the devotees of the celebrated local guru Sri Ramana Maharshi, who lived for decades on the slopes of the hill and died in Ramanashram in 1950. They come to climb Arunachala and sit in silence high on the hill, overlooking the massive Arunachaleswar Temple in the town below, with its huge carved gopurams, or towers.

These days on the four-hour walk around the hill - a holy practice called pradakshina completed by hundreds each day and thousands every full moon - you are as likely to encounter a bearded law graduate from London as you are a barefoot Ramana devotee from Delhi.

Most Westerners arrive between November and February, when the weather is cooler and many of the big festivals on the mountain take place. French and German, Australian and American, Israeli and English, they get around on scooters or bicycles wearing the ultimate Tiruvannamalai accessory, a cream cotton shoulder bag purchased for a few rupees at the Ramanashram book shop. On it are printed the words of Ramana Maharshi, who viewed the mountain as his master. "Arunachala, thou dost root out the ego of those who meditate on thee in the heart, oh Arunachala."

Ten years ago this part of Tiruvannamalai was a very different place. T. Murugan, who runs Mountain Tailors, remembers being able to shut up shop at midnight and sleep on the dusty track outside when the only traffic that might disturb him was a passing cyclist. "This was all forest," he says, pointing at the large cluster of shops - including a chemist, a boutique, a supermarket and numerous chai, or tea, shops - on the now busy road facing Ramanashram. "Local people started to notice what Westerners needed and set up businesses to service them." Why do they come? "There are two reasons," says Murugan. "Some need help to improve their lives, and they come to be near Arunachala, seeking that. Others have everything already, but they don't have what they need most - and that is the thing which they can get from the mountain in abundance. That is shanti \."

Since the 1960s, when the Beatles went on a pilgrimage to Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas, various holy places in India have been besieged by spiritual tourists from the West. But up to even five years ago no locals could have imagined that something as high-tech as an Internet cafe could be viable in this sleepy suburb. Now there are seven spots where you can check your e-mails, call home and even make photocopies.

The cafe's owner, Beate Kumar, from Germany, met her husband, a local man called S. Kumar, when she first visited, more than 10 years ago, falling in love with both him and the mountain. "When I came there was no tarmac on the road, only sand, and no street lights. You did pradakshina by the light of a full moon," she says. After returning from Germany two years ago with their first child, Janani, who is now five, the couple experienced difficulties staying in touch with relations abroad, so they opened Shanti Internet Cafe, a quiet, comfortable outlet well off the main road. It's been thriving ever since.

Other new businesses are booming. At the new Ramana Supermarket, the owner, G. Divakar, remembers a time when he had nine customers a day. He now does a roaring trade in pains au chocolat delivered from the French-Indian city of Pondicherry and keeps visitors in supplies of bottled water, pasta and freshly baked bread.

"That I am so busy is purely by guru's grace," he says, motioning to one of the pictures of a benevolent looking Ramana that are everywhere in the town. Asked how much of his business comes from foreigners he smiles. "I think about service first and money second. The only reason for my success is my location near Ramanashram."

In addition to the more seasonal visitors is a small community of about 30 foreigners who out of commitment to Ramana, a connection to the mountain or devotion to local gurus remain in the area through the stifling summer heat. Govinda Boley, a 28-year-old Englishman, came here from Lucknow, in northern India, in 1997, the year his guru, Papaji, who as a younger man had been a disciple of Ramana, died. "It seemed natural to come here, and a lot of Papaji's devotees base themselves in Tiruvannamalai during the winter season," he says.

Asked what changes he has noticed since he arrived he points to the services tailored for Western tourists. "Six years ago if you came here you would have been forced to have a much more Indian experience," he explains. "You would have had to buy your own food to cook, and you would have spent most of your time in Ramanashram. Now that the place is on the backpackers' map the visitor can go to any number of restaurants to eat Western-style food and have their spiritual needs taken care of by a guru who flew in from California."

Arunachala Ramana flew in from North Carolina, where his original Association of Happiness for All Mankind ashram has been located since the 1970s. He follows the teaching of Ramana Maharshi, which is known as self-inquiry, a philosophy based on the ancient Advaita teachings of India.

Ramana Maharshi maintained that the true self was to be found not in the mind, body or senses but in an inner consciousness that can be attained by quietly pursuing the inquiry "Who am I?" "Though this inquiry is a mental operation only, it destroys all mental operations, including itself, just as the stick with which a funeral pyre is kindled is itself reduced to ashes when the pyre and corpse are burnt," said Ramana. "Then we attain knowledge and realisation of the self."

Nicknamed American Ramana by more cynical Tiruvannamalai residents, the Texan is just one of the gurus holding satsangs - meetings with beings who are "self-realised", or enlightened - each day. With strict guidelines and a detailed form to fill out before admission, his are slightly less well attended than those of other teachers who have set up around town. As one explanatory note from the ashram admonishes: "If you find these guidelines too restrictive for your nature perhaps you are not ready for the radically transforming nature of being in close Conscious Company with Ramana."

After a glass of chai in the morning and a read of the English-language Hindu newspaper, many Westerners like to go satsang shopping. For the light-hearted there is Radha, a pretty, playful guru who gives satsang in an old temple carved out of a rock at the base of Arunachala. She sits laughing with an orange shawl covering her head, feeding titbits to monkeys while men and women return day after day to question her about the path to enlightenment.

A young man in orange robes sits smiling beside her. A former accountant and football star back at his American high school, he has taken sannyasi - vows renouncing worldly things such as sex and money - to become a swami, or religious teacher, and devote his existence to Radha. After seeking Radha's permission, the swami lifts his guitar and sings a song about how he has no address, name or parents. His mother and father, visiting their son in India for the first time, sit cross-legged and expressionless in the audience.

For those who enjoy intellectual combat, Carl, a German, has proved popular this season. He gives satsang on the roof of his home, conducting invigorating discussions that test the mental dexterity of his devotees.

Werner, from Switzerland, lived for more than a decade in a cave in the south-western state of Kerala before coming to Tiruvannamalai; he gives satsang twice a week. He sits bare-chested in the lotus position, with a purple scarf around his neck. Before leading the audience in a sun-drenched meditation he gently entreats them to find their own spiritual path, not blindly follow anybody or any practice out of a sense of duty.

Afterwards Gabriel, a genial Londoner who is a regular fixture at the satsangs, brings some of those attending to his house nearby, to show them the massive cinema screen he has just acquired. Tonight he will be showing Westerners the DVD of the Irish comedy Waking Ned.

For many the satsangs are a useful and meaningful introduction to the teachings of Ramana and other Eastern spiritual philosophy, but longer-term residents of Tiruvannamalai object to the proliferation of gurus in the area. David Godman, who has been living in India for 27 years, has written 13 books based on the teachings of Ramana. He came across the guru as a student at Oxford and began practising self-inquiry when he moved to rural Limerick for a year in the 1970s.

"It's good for Tiruvannamalai, for the people who run guest houses, for the rickshaw drivers and for the restaurant owners, who can make money from the foreigners," he says. "But in my opinion these gurus are simply cashing in on the teachings of Ramana without being familiar with those teachings or having any connection with him. They are not claiming to be Ramana's successors, but they are coming here because of the fame of the place." He maintains that the 300 or 400 Westerners who come here each year with vaguely spiritual intentions have been attracted by Ramana but cautions that Ramana is not necessarily what brought these gurus here.

Some local business people will complain about late-night parties held by Westerners or bemoan their lack of understanding of and adherence to cultural codes, but on the whole foreigners have had a positive impact on the town. Boley is involved with a reforestation organisation called Tiruvannamalai Greening Society; he has already overseen the planting of 3,000 trees on a particularly denuded area of the hill. And for years devotees of Shanti Mali, a German organisation, have quietly run hospitals, orphanages and cottage industries in the area.

A small number of Irish people have made the journey to Tiruvannamalai. One of them, a film location manager from Dublin called Cathy Pearson, came to visit a friend. "It's intense here," she says. "After two days I wanted to leave, but I stayed and really felt happy here by the end of my trip. There are a lot of seriously spiritual people around. To come here I would say you have to be open-minded, open-hearted and just a little bit adventurous."

Gary, a Belfast man who came for a few weeks on his first trip through India, ended up staying for five months. "If you sit in a chai shop long enough somebody will happily explain to you the meaning of life, but personally I prefer not to talk about my reasons for being here. I just stay and keep to myself," he says. Like many people he describes the mountain as a magnet that he is powerless to resist.

Other international visitors - and they come from all over the world - enjoy the social stimulation of a place where small talk is rare and everyone has their eyes on larger life issues. "I've met more interesting people here in five weeks than I have in 50 years in my home town," says Donna McKinnon, from Vancouver Island, in Canada.

Tiruvannamalai's ancient spiritual circus - for a few rupees you can even get the gentle temple elephant to lob his trunk on your head in a novel if smelly blessing - is growing each season. Whether it's the meandering meaning-of-life conversations in the chai shop or the silent, solitary meditations as dawn breaks on the hill, there are endless diversions for both the backpacker and the seeker.

Enlightenment, don't know what it is, sang Van Morrison. While many of the new visitors to Tiruvannamalai would probably agree, more and more of them are having an illuminating time trying to find out.