I looked up from beneath my palm tree towards the empty sands, my younger son digging and the Arabian Sea beyond. I blinked. A cloud of flickering silver lights hovered along the shore. Insects? Sun spots? My ageing eyes? I stood up and then I saw. All along the pale Keralan sand, as far as I could see, thousands of mackerel were beaching, their sparkling bodies thrashing in the shallows.

My first thought was tsunami. I recalled baffled tourists in Thailand collecting fish marooned as the waters pulled back. But here on Mahari beach, the sea had not retreated. Indeed, every small wave brought in another multitude to add to those in death throes on the hot sand. My horrified son carried slithery handfuls to the water, but the tide just threw them back.

Soon there were cries from out at sea. A flotilla of wooden boats converged, men diving for land. And then the beach was full of Indians: villagers, children, the chefs from our hotel in kitchen whites. All rushing around filling pans or baskets, making sacks of the lungis they wore. Within half an hour the sand was bare again, whether for feast or market, every fish had gone.

Keralans call it “chakara”, a waiter told me, when a school of fish pursued by boats commits mass suicide. A man might see it once in a lifetime. It is certainly the strangest thing I have ever seen. A biblical miracle, nature's supermarket grab.

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But my sons on their first visit to India had already grown accustomed to everyday oddities. The elephant, in the midst of city traffic, being transported on a truck. The incidental painted cows, monkeys in trees sipping from discarded juice cartons, the temple where you can rid yourself of a bad habit by smashing a coconut. They loved India, as I do, because it is the least boring country on Earth.

In 1989 my husband and I backpacked across the subcontinent from the Punjab to Tamil Nadu, the Andaman Islands to Rajasthan. It was such a special six months that I still view my life as before and after India. We had waited until our sons were older - 12 and 10 - because we wanted to show them the country, not veg out in a beach resort. And they would need to be able to cope with the heat, poverty, crowds, discomfort, the spicy food and its occasional repercussions.

Even so, taking children meant abandoning our backpacker habits - second-class train tickets, meals in roadside dhabbas and budget lodgings - for private transport and fancy hotels. In short, we would be what we had most despised: tourists not travellers, hamstrung by a schedule, air-conditioned from authentic India.

It might seem egregious to be chauffeured about, just the four of us, in a ten-seater minibus, by a driver called Ravi, who was solicitous of our every wish. Maybe I'm getting old, but I was secretly overjoyed. Our itinerary was a masala of southern India, taking in beaches, backwaters, a hill station, temple towns and a safari. Nine places in 21 days, each separated by an average of six hours on rutted roads. It was me, more than my sons, who needed the prospect of a swimming pool at journey's end.

The boys' first encounter with India was in the bazaar at Mysore, where we were hounded by vendors selling jasmine oil, sandalwood and stringed instruments made from gourds. The boys were mortified by the attention and we grabbed a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. It was another week before they grew accustomed to friendly strangers asking their names and “native place” or wanting to take their photos.

From Mysore we headed to Nagarhole and the Orange County Hotel on the Kabini River. We took a trip by bicycle, through cane fields, down dusty tracks, to visit a local village, where our guide introduced us to his grandmother and sister who wove baskets in earth-floored huts.

A holiday, to me, must include seeing how others live. Beaches are interchangable; people are not. And because India has an Anglophone heritage, my favourite memories of our trip are conversations as much as sights. As backpackers, we eschewed guides. But Cox & Kings, which planned our trip, provides local experts to discourse on temples and palaces. That is the least of what you learn. Our Mysore guide told us how the mobile phone is transforming village India; in Tanjore we were lectured on the country's inherent government corruption; and, in Madurai, why middle-class Indian women now want only one or two children.

But I think the happiest times of that three weeks came on the road in our magic bus, simply watching India - its street life, the hope-giving hordes of immaculate-uniformed children walking barefoot to school, even the colour combinations of the buildings - pink and green, red and purple - which would clash anywhere but under an Indian sun.

Ravi, we found, knew every blade of grass in Tamil Nadu. He took us along minor roads, through tiny settlements we rarely saw by train. He pointed out crops drying on roads, hidden palaces, the wages earned by the road builders in Karnataka, explained the lifestyle of tea-planters in the hill station of Coonoor. He stopped at roadsides for us to buy cashews, salty banana chips and masala chai. And it was a valuable lesson in humility for our sons to see that while we headed off for air-con rooms, Ravi slept on the bus.

In Coonoor, a quieter cousin to Ooty, we stayed at the Taj Garden Retreat, a building from British rule. I had forgotten how much I dislike hill stations, or rather the Westerners who visit them, seemingly to play out their Jewel in the Crown fantasies in musty replicas of Surrey golf clubs. And hill station food is ghastly. But it was worth it to travel the narrow-gauge Nilgiri mountain railway, through the tea plantations that terrace the landscape.

After a night in Bruton Boat House, a beautiful colonial-style hotel overlooking the harbour, we left for a backwater cruise. Our boat was regal, with a veranda that allowed us to observe the Keralan scenery. We sat like Mogul emperors stuffed full of delicious food, waited on by our three staff and soon very bored. One day felt enough.

Given the rigours of travelling, we had factored in to our itinerary plenty of rest days. Mahari Beach Resort between Cochin and Alleppey is quite the earthly paradise, with its exquisite food, hammocks in coconut palms, tropical gardens that lead to the pristine beach. Yet after three days of plopping into the swimming pool - and even after the amazing “chakara” happening - our sons were itching to get back on the bus.

We had thought the temples of Madurai might tax their patience, but Hinduism, with its fantastic stories, tolerance of non-believers and audience participation is the least dry of religions. And so we queued for blessings, lit candles, crushed coconuts, and had bindis applied to foreheads.

It was my birthday in our last stop, Tanjore, a small temple town, and my presents included a blessing from an elephant and flowers delivered by a man with an extra thumb. Hotel Parisutham was the most modest we stayed in, but pleasingly eccentric. The swimming pool was grandiose, with an elaborate waterfall, but was also home to frogs, crickets and dive-bombing bats.

That night I asked my husband how this trip differed from our six months of backpacking. “We didn't have constant diarrhoea,” he said. That was undeniable. But what we paid for, more than comfort, was convenience; not wasting a whole morning, as we often did, queueing for a railway ticket.

Travelling in style hadn't locked us away from India, from its conversations and people. Our children had drawn us to new experiences. And India, for all its economic boom and supposed globalisation, still showed little sign of wanting to be anything but its own unique self.

Need to know

Cox & Kings (020-7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk) offers a 15-night tailormade Grand Tour of India taking in Mysore, Ooty, Cochin, the backwaters, Madurai, Tanjore and Covelong. From £2,445pp including BA flights, B&B, transfers and excursions. Extensions can be arranged to Northern India, including Agra and the Taj Mahal.

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