When we reached the age of 8 my mother told each of her four children that she would take them on their own, anywhere, for a week on a budget of £50.

My eldest brother wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, my sister visited the zoo every day in London and I wanted to go to the New Forest and watch a foal being born. So we camped next to the gorse bushes in the rain and at 5am on the last morning I finally watched a pony giving birth.

It was the most memorable week of my childhood, sitting cross-legged playing cards with my mother in a tent, eating my way through boxes of Shreddies without having to share the plastic toys inside them and going swimming together in the stream.

So when my eldest son, Ludo, was 8 and complaining about his three noisy younger siblings, I asked him whether he would like to choose a place where we could go for a few days. “I want to go to Egypt or India,” he said immediately. “What about Wales?” I suggested, but he was set on a country that had lots of gods and temples.

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It seemed insane to take an eight-year-old halfway across the world when he hadn't even seen Europe. But then Ludo's best friend, Honor, told her mother, and that was it, we were all going.

We decided to travel in the middle of summer, when it would be hottest, muggiest and cheapest, even though the children were most likely to feel faint or fall sick. But it worked, there were few tourists, the hotels and temples were quieter and the heat made it seem more exotic.

Ludo and Honor spent months working out the trip. They decided to go to Delhi and Udaipur, because they had the most princes and palaces, and they started to read The Jungle Book.

Ludo pored over maps, made elaborate charts of the gods and packed his own bag with one pair of shorts, a T-shirt, a pair of binoculars and a giant stuffed turtle (which proved more useful than socks).

“It is so hot everyone here is wearing pyjamas. There are painted cows wandering all over the roads and ear cleaners sitting on the roundabout,” he wrote in his diary when we arrived in Delhi (the first time he has voluntarily written anything more than a Keep Out sign).

From the moment they reached the airport and were allowed by officials to ride round the luggage carousel they liked the country. Children travel far more easily than parents. “Stop fussing,” they kept saying, having swapped their clothes for kurtas and turbans.

They enjoyed playing in the parks of Delhi, running among the tombs, watching children hit cricket balls with pieces of wood and eating ice cream despite being told that they would probably get Delhi belly. In Udaipur they loved the small details among the heat and noise, the family of five balanced on a bicycle, elephants' backsides disappearing into the market place.

Riding through the Rajasthan countryside one day they waved at the women in the fields and berated the men for lying under the trees. They played with the children swimming by a lotus lake, skimmed stones with them, and followed them to their secret caves.

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