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"Gley heaven" shouts the guide. "And kickwisher!" I'm sorry? "See, on the grass - wybor, wybor!"

I am on an early morning game-viewing cruise on the misty waters of Lake Periyar, in the green hills of Kerala, southwest India. It should be a serene, uplifting experience, but the boat's engine is roaring like a turbo-charged lawnmower, and James, our smiling wildlife guide, is completely unintelligible. Ah - you mean a grey heron. And a kingfisher. But wybor? Oh, so that's a wild boar...

"Effluent, effluent!" James continues, and we all burst giggles. There on the grassy banks are a herd of twelve cocoa brown elephants performing their morning ablutions. It is a charming sight, but - frankly - if seeing animals is your thing, go to Africa. This corner of the subcontinent is just too populous, too animated, for meaningful jungle encounters. You should visit Kerala instead simply for the overwhelming sensory richness of the place, to dangle an idle hand in its gentle backwaters, and to be pleasantly surprised by the new, confident India that is arising from the mildewed dreams of British colonialism. Above all, you must go, like the six Indiaholic friends I am with, purely to have fun - to snooze in the sun and eat delicious food laced with spices and coconut; to catch a few hangovers from the days of the Raj; to shop, gossip and "get fixed" with massages and spa treatments that cost a fraction of Western prices.

We had begun our tour in Madras, a sprawling city on the Bay of Bengal that has now been re-named Chennai. Its beach stretches for three miles - only Copacabana is longer. This being a tour with English-speaking guides and chauffeurs - which is feasible in India even on a modest budget - we move fast. Within hours of landing, some of us are already in the shops buying lengths of raw silk. Shopping in India is highly infectious, I discover, as I walk out with an armful of pink saris destined to become curtains.

Once the credit card has been walked, sightseeing is permissible. Madras was founded by the East India Company in 1639, and the legacy of British ambitions makes poignant viewing. In St Mary's church in Fort St George, I stare wistfully at a polished brass plaque kindling the memory of Major Lionel Langley, killed in 1890 after "an encounter with a tiger". Marble statues stare down icily at the sunlit pews, and the thick walls groan with mournful poems by Cowper and tributes to the numerous men and women felled by cholera, childbirth and a stout devotion to "King, Company and Country".

What would these noble hopers think of India now? Would they love a country where hotels still serve Horlicks, Bournvita and porridge for breakfast? What would they make of the unabashed consumerism of its relentlessly rising middle classes? Sitting in the traffic jams of Madras, staring into a chaos of patched-up cars and custard-coloured auto-rickshaws, you get plenty of time to ponder such things. "Nudity is better than bad dressing" advises one billboard, and I hear a quiet cough from Queen Victoria.

Life is considerably more relaxed once we fly to Cochin, a famous spice port on the west coast of Kerala. Now called Kochi, it is easy to imagine the days when Portugese and Dutch traders sailed into the harbour to haggle over the price of pepper, tea and ginger. There is much to see, but we can't possibly let history interfere with lunch. Keralan cuisine is predominantly vegetarian, and always prominently positioned at the gateway to the backwaters, we feast on dishes made with pumpkins, beans, red rice and the flowers of plantain. The region's sweet-toothed Syrian Christian heritage is reflected in a heavenly rice pudding flavoured with cardamom and palm sugar.

Afterwards, I take a ferry across to Jew Town to see its evocative synagogue, which lies hidden in a network of pastel-hued streets full of tempting shops selling antiques and spices. Built in 1568, its floor is a dreamy sea of glossy blue and white tiles shipped over from Canton in the 18th century. There are over a thousand of them, all different, telling the story of a mandarin's daughter who falls in love with a peasant.

These days everyone wants to go to Kerala, but the synagogue is the only place where I feel the pressure of other tourists. Given the eulogies the region has received in works ranging from Arundhati Roy's Booker-winning The God of Small Things to Merchant Ivory's recent film Cotton Mary, you half-expect it to be over-run by couples in Gap khaki. But, travelling away from the beaches, we encounter only a handful of Western tourists.

Climbing up into the cool and leafy foothills of the Western Ghats, our progress is like a fleet of memsahibs repairing to the hill stations. We wind through the carefully sculpted tea plantations of the Cardamom Hills in a convoy of cream Ambassador cars. Mine has seats draped with white linen, a ceiling garlanded with faux velvet patterned with tiger motifs, and a driver who has studied Shakespeare and Byron. As I look out at classic tea-picking scenes straight from a box of PG Tips, it is hard to believe they still make holidays like this.

At Thekkady, the scene of our farcical lake cruise, I sign up for my first massage. Ayurvedic medicine has been practised in Kerala for centuries, and now every visitor wants to have a rejuvenating rub-down or two. I lie stark naked on a jackwood table, and a young masseur drips warm sesame oil over me. It smells like burnt toast, and as his hands vigorously sweep from head to toe, I feel like a piece of teak furniture getting a good polishing.

An hour later, with pores cleansed and joints cracked, I feel most content; a bit spaced, even, like I've had a close encounter with a steamroller. Sadly, I don't look any younger, but it's definitely worth the 500 rupees that appears on my hotel bill. Later, down in Kumarakom, I meet an Ayurvedic expert who spent five years learning its therapies. "The massage is not the point" he explains, "it is all about the application of oils."

Out on Lake Vembanad, life is all about the application of sunshine. Cruising the backwaters of Kerala has been hyped so much I'd become sceptical - what about the rain, the mosquitoes, the filthy water? How wrong! The 60 year-old converted rice barge we board for a day has a woven palm roof that resembles the Sydney Opera House, and its interiors are a homely mix of coir matting, hurricane lamps, red plastic chairs and bamboo screens decorated with colourful bunches of asters. The rain keeps away, a soft breeze disperses any mozzies, and the waters are clean and tranquil.

Our lazy day, during which the crew of four cooks lunch, is like a voyage through some tropical, overgrown Venice. Lined with coconut palms, the canals offer a slice of seemingly idyllic village life - waving children, lines of brightly coloured washing, fishermen paddling to work, gaudily painted temples, bankside stores selling Kingfisher beer "most thrilling chilled". Kerala has been Communist since 1957, so the palms are often decorated with hammer-and-sickle designs. It is also relatively wealthy - every family has a member working in the Gulf - and the literacy rate is close to a hundred per cent. Smoking in public is banned, and life in the dense green world of the backwaters seems so healthy and relaxed we are all forced to re-assess our traditional images of India.

After so much beauty and indolence, I grow reluctant to fly home via Bombay (now Mumbai) with its ghastly slums and great seas of workers sloshing round haughty Victorian buildings. 14 million people - but what a wonderful city! Don't be put off by the Dickensian combination of rags and riches, for there is progress and hope here too - not least in the great merchant energy of the streets and markets. "If you work hard, the options are wide open", explains my guide as we drive in from the airport listening to Shania Twain. As if to prove this, the boys at the traffic lights are not only selling newspapers but also copies of Kitchen and Bathroom Trends, Danielle Steel novels and a get-rich-quick guide by Bill Gates.

With limited time, we move into shopping overdrive. The women make straight for the lavish silk and embroidered clothes in the classy boutiques of the Taj Mahal hotel, flicking through sequinned dresses and glittery shoes, clocking the Armani copies, demanding alterations within hours. We visit the trendy interiors shops around Kemp's Corner, the high-security diamond stores of Zaveri Bazaar, the theatrical antiques shops of the Thieves' Bazaar and the bountiful galleries of fruit and veg in Crawford Market.

Having a bit of an aluminium fetish, I buy tins and boxes in the metalwork shops of Kalbadevi, 18 for around £20. Back home they cost up to £12 each. The price barely matters, though, because we are buying for the memories as much as the bargains, bottling up the heady experience of India into suitcases full of richly coloured rugs, mirror-jewelled bedspreads and ambrosially soft pashminas.

My best purchase costs just 3 rupees (4p). It is a platform ticket for Bombay's Victoria Terminus railway station, where I stand amid the evening rush hour as floods of commuters sweep through from the marbled ticket halls to dimly lit platforms where dark brown trains are bound for Agra, Hyderabad and the Punjab. Opened in 1887 and inspired by St Pancras, this palatial station seems a microcosm of India now and Britain then. It is the perfect stage for plotting further journeys into this marvellous country, and to quietly admit that I too have become an Indiaholic.

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