Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of earth!

— Rudyard Kipling, 1892

RUDYARD KIPLING composed these lines more than ten years before my father was posted to India as a doctor. My father docked at Bombay harbour, and was based there for several years after the start of the last century. Last month, nearly 100 years after his sojourn in India, I visited it for the first time (although I had been to Pakistan and Sri Lanka during my parliamentary days 30 years ago).

Kipling and my father had similar backgrounds, and both would have been surprised at the current interest in Indian complementary medicine, its spas and treatments. It is hard to visualise either of these Victorians being partially submerged in a bath beneath marigold petals floating in water laced with plant essences while being able to enjoy a panoramic view of the sun setting over Lake Pichola at Udaipur in Rajasthan.

In Kipling’s India, doctors were too busy doing what little they could to keep their patients alive to be concerned about stress. Traditional Indian medicine teaches that marigold essences are a great calmer of the nerves. So they may be, but 100 years ago the medical profession was always too conscious of some other lines of Kipling — “a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East ” — to stray beyond the confines of the traditional teaching of British medical schools to focus on easing the tensions of life. The memorials on the walls of St Thomas’s Cathedral and the Afghan church bear witness that death from a host of tropical diseases took a toll just as surely as the battlefields.

Bombay is rapidly becoming a thriving westernised city as richly endowed with luxurious hotels, modern offices and interesting shopping malls as it is in history. These days the likelihood of any visitor ending beneath one of Kipling’s bleached tombstones is no more than a fear based on a distant memory. Hence, with anxiety about cholera removed, there is time to be concerned about the benefits to the immune system of relaxation and stress-relieving therapy, such as aromatherapy, massage and yoga — the usual treatments offered by the spas — which are a feature of some of the best hotels in India, including two I visited, the Oberoi Hotel in Bombay and the Udaivilas in Udaipur.

Arguably the most luxurious of the spa hotels is Udaivilas, on the banks of Lake Pichola, within sight of the city palace and the two island palaces Jag Niwas and Jag Mandir, which feature in most travel agent’s brochures.

Those who remember the tatty facilities offered by European Victorian spa hotels even 30 years ago, and their equally decrepit clientele, would be astounded and rejuvenated by a visit to Udaivilas. The hotel is a modern building, but modelled on the great island palaces on the lake. It is a mass of marbled domes, arches, pavilions, balconies, turrets, niches and jalis (fretwork marble screens) set among green lawns and garden fountains.

The clientele of the old European spa, however rich and vain, were crumbling as fast as their hotels, very unlike the youthful clientele at the Udaivilas. They are seeking refuge from the shackles of corporate life and a surfeit, whether in the East or West, of long working hours, late nights and good living.

The hotel claims to provide holistic, non-clinical treatments — ie, complementary, ranging from ancient Ayurvedic medicine, aromatherapy to yoga and the gym.

The gymnasium is very 21st-century and is equipped with a mass of intricate machinery. There are communal pools as well as private ones attached to some of the rooms. The principal therapeutic benefit is the opportunity to discard the electronic bondage imposed by mobile phones, e-mails and pagers.

The yoga is an experience of its own. A combination of (the wondrously named) Regimental Sergeant Major Britain and Squadron Sergeant Major Sergeant, when I was in the Army, gave up the unequal battle of making my joints flexible. Not so Miss Vidya Nipunage. She took me through stretching and breathing exercises and introduced me to meditation. While meditating, my task was to lie in the shade on the roof of a 19th-century shooting lodge. A light breeze cooled me while a monkey watched with curiosity from the battlements, and peacocks and pigeons called.

I was told to think of nothing; this was easy — years at school had been passed in a similar way. After the yoga it was along to Kesani Thaneerat for the spa’s own massage, or to Kessaneewan Tannimitrkul for immune-boosting aromatherapy or steam baths. Did it help? There was no doubt that I felt supremely relaxed.

One odd finding, which may be coincidental: doctors recognise that some patients with cancer develop acanthosis nigricans — an increased pigmentation and hypertrophy of the skin around the armpits, groin and inner thighs. I have noticed it on myself over the past few years — incidentally, it sometimes precedes other evidence of cancer. Amazingly, over the past fortnight, mine has faded slightly. This may be a late effect of last year’s radiotherapy — but who knows?

Greaves Travel, 53 Welbeck St, W1 (020-7486 6646).