The first time we went to Ooty, the old British hill station in South India, my wife and I had no idea it would soon be looming so large in our lives. Certainly we never expected to be sponsoring two children's education there and seeing a way of life so remote from the regular tourist trail.

That first visit was 12 years ago, as part of a five-month trundle around India. We had settled on Ooty, almost 2,150m (7,000ft) up in the Blue Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu, as an overnight stop on the way from Mysore to Cochin. Overnight? We were so entranced by Regency Villas, a hunting lodge-turned-hotel in the grounds of a maharajah's palace, that we decided to stay for three days. We eventually stayed for ten.

With its fretworked gables and pots of geraniums, it looked like a salmon-pink Swiss chalet, where time had stopped in 1925. Its walls were covered with sepia photographs of Indian royals and pith-helmeted huntsmen; there was porridge, poached eggs and pancakes for breakfast; plump hot-water bottles and thick eiderdowns on chilly nights; and fires lit in the grates of the vast bedrooms. It was a marvellous place to write.

Every morning, Ramu, the 19-year-old “room boy”, staggered along the corridor with a 1930s Remington typewriter and I hammered out travel features.

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Over the years, Regency Villas lingered in our thoughts. A couple of years ago, we decided to go back.

Nothing much had changed. The Remington had been replaced by a word processor, but the porridge and the poached eggs and the hot-water bottles were still there. And so was Ramu, now working as a waiter and as delighted to see us as we were to see him. He invited us to tea at the cottage he shared with his sister Lakshmi, brother-in-law Sampath (also a waiter) and their son, John Solomon, 6, and daughter, Princy, 4.

The cottage had three small rooms with earth floors and no heating apart from the Primus stove used for cooking. We sat on plastic chairs sipping chai (sweet, milky Indian tea) and talked about the children's education. It cost the family the equivalent of £80 a year, a fifth of their income.

We spent a busy week in Ooty, also called Ootacamund. We discovered old British bungalows down country lanes suggesting Cumbria at one turn, Umbria at the next. We visited the grand, white-pillared “Snooty Ooty” Club, where the rules of snooker were reputedly finalised.

We explored St Stephen's church, a spick-and-span example of Indian Early English full of memorials to imperial soldiers and tea planters. We met the Todas, buffalo-worshipping tribespeople, at their village. We spent hours in the wonderful Nilgiri Library, hardly changed in 150 years.

And over lunch at Shinkow's Chinese restaurant, we mulled over the £80 it cost to educate John Solomon and Princy for a year. In London we could easily pay that for the meal we were having. We decided to pay the children's fees and have been paying since then. It's a small gesture but it has given a new focus to our two subsequent stays at Regency Villas.

On our most recent visit, we find that Sampath's family now owns four chairs and a table and Ramu, translating for them, tells us: “They are saving for a bicycle and saving money in the bank for the children.” He adds that they can now afford better food.

We admire John Solomon's sports trophies, talk about Princy's dancing class and ambition to be a nurse, and say goodbye for another year.

NEED TO KNOW

Cox & Kings (020-7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk) has a 15-night Grand Tour of South India including Ooty (two nights at the Taj Savoy hotel), Bangalore, Mysore, Cochin, Madurai, Tanjore and a Kerala backwater cruise. It costs from £2,695pp, including flights. Tailor-made tours are also offered. Stay Regency Villas (0091 423 244 2555) has double rooms from about £27.

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