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.

The 10 best family adventures

Families want to go on proper adventures too. David Wickers explores this year’s best trips for all ages

• Big families, big holiday ideas

A family adventure on the Isle of Wight

The Hackett family catamaran and climb the island on an adventure camping holiday

A wild family safari in Africa

Jeremy Lazell subjects his whole family to a new kid-friendly South African adventure. What could possibly go wrong?

Related Internet Links

• More family adventures in our dedicated section

Related Links

• Taking a toddler to Goa

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.

Times recommends

• Confessions at 39,000 feet - your stories
• Europe's 20 best Christmas markets 2009
• Cruise passengers say: ‘We’ll tip when we want to’