IT MAY be an old cliché but to say that India is an assault on the senses is completely true.

It's a place of intense colours: rich dark greens, vibrant reds and yellows, stark whites and deep browns. Add gold-fringed saris and silky shalwar kameez and you've got a hot, heady and tropical mix of culture.

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This is my first visit to India and if you'd told me before I left London that the air is scented with the fragrance of flowers and spices I wouldn't have believed you, but it is.
My friend Kate and I flew direct to Cochin in Kerala.

Our hotel, The Zuri Kumarakom Resort & Spa, is a two-hour drive from the airport. Set deep in the jungle near the south-west India coast, it lies on a series of interconnected caramel-brown waterways called the backwaters. To reach it we drive down twisting narrow lanes lined with people and animals.

At the water's edge, women wash their clothes on stones; not out of necessity but because stones and lake water give a better finish than soap powder and a washing machine.

The hotel is an oasis set around lush green lawns and an ornamental lake and surrounded by the backwaters.

My room, overlooking Vembanad Lake, is more a small cottage encompassing four rooms, three showers and a swimming pool.

Due to its relative isolation the hotel happily organises plenty of excursions to explore the surrounding area.

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We visit Aymanam, the village once home to writer and political activist Arundhati Roy whose book The God Of Small Things won the Man Booker Prize in 1997. We also visit the house of Kathakali maestro Mathoor Govindankutty. Kathakali is a 400-year-old dance-drama and martial arts tradition which includes hand-to-hand combat, fighting with staves, knives, nets and daggers and an impressive display of fire-eating and flame-throwing.

We try some of the dance moves but thankfully the lid of the petrol can stays firmly on.

As we travel through the village, children run alongside showing off their toys (a wooden car and a huge rubber tyre) and to their delight we give them pens.

At the hotel that evening the martial artists perform with knives, spears and kerosene. It really is death-defying. Exotically made up and elaborately dressed, dancers tell the story - any one of 101 classical tales - through symbolic actions, facial expressions and stylised movements accompanied by a drummer and a singer. Both are exhilarating to watch and it has been useful to visit an expert beforehand.

Kerala's backwaters are home to people who live on sturdy rush houseboats that resemble very fancy barges. These potter around the waters as their residents earn a living fishing.

Sadly the backwaters are congested with water hyacinth, a rampant American invader choking them to death. It is a Catch-22 situation: the authorities can't destroy it without killing the other wildlife in the area but they can't leave it without it choking the place to death. The best they can do is manage the situation and hope a solution comes along.

We take our own trip on the lake in one of the hotel's rush houseboats, The Laguna. It is magical with the echoing silence punctuated only by the call of birdlife and the puttering of the boat's engines.

I arrive back just in time for a swim before the massage I have booked at the Maya Spa.

The hotel has a pool by the spa which I try out as an alternative to the one in my garden. It is congested. There is one other bather and I make a note to swim at home as I head off for my treatment.

Spa therapies are given in conjunction with a consultation with the resident ayurvedic doctor. There's not much wrong with me except the ever-present need to relax, so I'm offered the hour-long ayurvedic rejuvenation treatment, a full-body massage and steam bath which leaves me refreshed and fully relaxed.

Upon arrival at The Zuri White Sands Goa Resort & Casino the next day, we're served high tea as we check in.

It's quiet compared with Anjuna on Goa's north coast where the beach parties are legendary.

The next day I try my hand at parasailing off India's longest beach, Colva, and enjoy fantastic views far into the Goan countryside. I can see Kate below on a jet ski but I can't see quite as far as the Western Ghats, the mountains that divide Goa from the rest of India. We explore Old Goa on what just happens to be the festival of St Francis Xavier.

Goa's patron saint lies in a mummified state in the Basilica of Bom Jesus and we line up to pay our respects.

No trip to India is complete without a visit to a spice plantation. We see cinnamon trees, ginger, vanilla and clove and learn that the apparently stray dogs wandering around are kept to chase monkeys from the trees. We discover how to make betel palms to freshen breath and watch a betel nut harvester at work.

After lunch, included in the tour, we raid the small shop for star anise, turmeric, tamarind and vanilla, the second-most expensive spice in the world after saffron.

There's no doubt, the old cliché is true. India truly is an assault on the senses.

THE KNOWLEDGE: Kuoni (01306 747008/www.kuoni.co.uk) offers three nights at the Zuri Kumarakom, three nights at The Zuri White Sands, Goa, and one night at the Zuri Whitefield, Bangalore, from £1,565pp (two sharing) B&B. Price includes flights from Heathrow and transfers.

Cruises on the Zuri Kumarakom honeymoon houseboat (arranged by the hotel): lunch cruise from £192 per couple, overnight cruise from £233 per couple. Price includes chef, private butler and on-board Jacuzzi.

Spa treatments at the Maya Spa at Zuri Kumarakom from £35.

Watersports can be arranged by Zuri White Sands. Jet skiing from £13pp and parasailing from £20pp.

India Tourism Office: 0207 437 3677/www.incredibleindia.org