Backpackers have known this for decades – if you’re seeking an “authentic” travel experience, a chance to mingle with the locals on an equal footing, to share their stories and sample their cuisine, you need to go native and move in with them.

Homestay holidays are catching on, and while some remain simple mattress-and-a-meal experiences, others promise smart digs with lots of extras: cooking lessons, perhaps, or personal trekking tours.

A homestay is much more than merely a B&B: your host will act as guide, interpreter, travel agent and confidant. And as this brand of accommodation moves into the mainstream, established tour operators are parcelling up homestays as part of posher tours.

Here’s our whirlwind world-wide guide to some of the most exciting options on offer, some packaged, some independent.

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HIMALAYAS

Teetering high up near the Tib-etan border, India’s Spiti Valley is pimpled with mountainside monasteries. Your lodgings here will be in single rooms in two-storey houses made of mud and brick, and you can expect a vibrant diet of breads, chapatis and momos – flour balls filled with minced goat or mutton.

The food is served with sea-buckthorn tea, also used to make Spiti Magic, the local soft drink. There’s some sensational trekking on offer, and cooking lessons and yak safaris, too. Mahindra Homestays (020 3140 8422, www.mahindrahomestays.com) has rooms from £37pp per night, including all meals and a local guide

SOUTH AFRICA

Hazel’s Homestays is in Oudtshoorn, on the Garden Route between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, and is run by the eponymous Hazel and 11 other enterprising women with rooms to spare. Perhaps they’re not as polished as the (mostly) white-owned B&Bs along the Garden Route, but they all come with a warm welcome and probably a nifty stew or two.

Oudtshoorn is the ostrich capital of South Africa, so don’t be surprised if a big bird makes an appearance; excursions could include the Cango show caves, and a nearby wildlife ranch stalked by cheetahs and wild dogs. Rooms cost about £20pp per night, and can be included in a 12-day Garden Route tour with Tribes (01728 685971, www.tribes.co.uk); from £1,630, flights are extra. It also offers homestays in India

THAILAND

The star homestay here is in Koh Pet, a village in the impeccably rural Isaan region of northeast Thailand. Hosts Lamai and Jimmy have three bedrooms to let, plus a great garden growing bananas and mangoes. You’ll take most meals in the shady barbecue area: typically, sticky rice with pork, vegetables and chillies.

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