Fiona Bruce's Indian adventure - Telegraph As for me, I thought it would be gentle fun. I've been on camels before, lumbering slowly through the desert - not hugely exciting, but I enjoyed the Lawrence of Arabia vibe. It turned out, however, that Reggie's beasts were the Red Rums of the camel fraternity, and we set off at a cracking pace. I was perched in front of my driver, who either crooned lovingly to his animal or urged it on with a guttural shout. I bobbed around so hard I thought I was going to bob right off, and alternated between alarm and fits of laughter as I imagined how this was going down with reluctant son and even more reluctant husband. As the sun sank towards the horizon, we slowed eventually to a stop by a small house marooned in sandy, thorny scrubland, where we were offered a cup of chai, the delicious, teeth-rotting Indian tea made with condensed milk. Two women dressed in vivid red and gold saris prepared it in a smoke-filled, windowless room lit by a fire over which hung the kettle. In an adjacent room, a baby rolled fretfully back and forth on a bed made of wood and rope. Back at Reggie's camp, the camel ride was declared a success by all, thrilling enough to please even the recalcitrant males of the family. As we strolled around the seven-acre property, with its swimming pool and spacious permanent tents, we had our first encounter with Reggie. He made quite an entrance, emerging from the darkness lit by flaming torches, cigar in hand, flanked by four massive Alsatians. Tall, charming and urbane, Reggie is the ultimate host, for whom nothing is too much trouble. A bad-boy-made-good with a masters degree from his years in the United States, he keeps guests entertained with anecdotes and a seriously well-stocked drinks cabinet. We made a rendezvous for the next morning for what promised to be the highlight of our three-day Marwar tour: a leopard safari. Next day, as dawn rose and we hurtled along in our pleasingly regal convoy, one thought played on my mind. That night we would be staying in a tent, in the bush - and I had never been camping before. Just the thought of sweaty canvas, a mouldy groundsheet and communal loos (or, worse still, no loo at all) has always been an ample deterrent; I can cope with most things but I hate to be parted from a good old flushing lavatory. Plus, something that had worried me since we booked the leopard safari was that, to our family, India equalled food poisoning; up to that point in our holiday, everyone in our family had been ill except my daughter, who refused to eat anything Indian but poppadoms and flatbread, and was surviving on a high induced by large quantities of fizzy drinks. The thought of us all having Delhi-belly under canvas was too horrific to contemplate. But then, there was much to take our minds off such worries. We drove past the spectacular Jawai dam, forming a calm reservoir dotted with fishing boats and surrounded by dry, dusty terrain. Its tranquillity, though, is deceptive - these waters are bristling with monster crocodiles, some of them up to 15ft long. Reggie Singh, centre, with members of his team. Our first stop was Castle Bera, owned by Reggie's brother-in-law, Thakur Baljeet Singh , a chieftain known locally as Winkoo. A former hunting lodge, it is crammed into a corner of the village, towering over the bustle of cars, rickshaws, goats, cattle, brightly dressed women carrying water jugs on their heads, tailors hunched over Singer sewing machines and barbers with nothing but scissors, a mirror and a patch of pavement. The castle itself is a ramshackle but grand white palace, with domes and scalloped walls in the traditional Mughal fashion, albeit with a new concrete extension. We could hear the welcome we were about to receive before we pulled up on to the drive, from an enthusiastic band playing ear-splitting pipe music and bashing their drums at top volume. This is what greeted the members of Rajasthan's royal families who used to drop in for a spot of hunting (they still visit, but now toting cameras rather than guns). A woman with bangles encircling her arm from her wrists to her armpits scattered rose petals over our heads as we walked through the arched entrance; another pressed a red bindi, embedded with a single grain of rice, on to our foreheads; a third draped garlands of flowers round our necks. Castle Bera. Winkoo showed us around his home, where the clock seemed to have stopped in the 1950s: full of dark furniture and black-and-white photos of the days when maharajas weighed down with jewellery bagged a few leopards while their doe-eyed wives posed for glamour shots in long satin dresses. Lunch, served by his personal chef, was a feast of dishes that were not too spicy for the ultra-conservative palate of our 10-year-old. Our hosts told us the story of the land ceiling brought in by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s, which banned any one person from owning more than 50 acres: her well-directed swipe at the maharajas, who at one stage owned more than 90 per cent of the country. This being India, a way was found around the legislation and it seems the maharajas" massed ranks of staff suddenly found themselves "gifted" vast tracts of land in name only. Reggie suggested that we retire to an apartment in the castle for a rest while his team set up our camp in the bush. As we lazed on the sofas, reading, I began to feel a stirring of something unwelcome in my stomach. Half an hour later I was writhing on the floor as my digestive system performed some kind of internal acrobatics. How could this happen now, when we were about to leave behind mod cons for a tent and a hole in the ground? I knew it wasn't caused by Winkoo's hospitality as no one else felt unwell. So I took an antibiotic tablet that a foreign correspondent from the newsroom had assured me was the equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on enemy bacteria, lay down and hoped for the best. About an hour later, to my almost tearful relief, I staged a Lazarus-like recovery, and was ready to go off and search for leopards with something approaching anticipation, rather than dread. Our Jeep bumped across the sand, past thorny shrubs and the occasional burst of vivid orange in the form of a flame tree. When we stopped by a mass of boulders several storeys high, Reggie cracked open the ice box, and with G and Ts in hand and yet more fizzy drinks for the children, we waited for the sunset and the leopards. We weren't disappointed. After just a few minutes, Reggie spied "Mr Spots" slinking along the top of the rocks, occasionally stopping to stare at us. The leopard carefully picked his way down the slope and, perhaps put off by our excitement, disappeared behind a thorn bush. But as it grew dark, more and more leopards began to appear. Our scouts rigged up hand-held lamps to the car battery and swept the lights back and forth across the hillside. It was like something out of The Jungle Book, the glare catching a pair of eyes gleaming in the darkness, then another and another, the closest only about 20ft away from our group. The leopards, we were told, gather in that place to prey on livestock after dark. Presumably, there had been instances of these predators being shot or poisoned. Afterwards we hurtled to our camp through the bush, startling wild boar and an Indian antelope, known as the nilgai, along the way. And what a camp it was. Nothing could have prepared me for this. This wasn't sweaty canvas and a hole in the ground, but a camp fit for a maharaja. We had two massive tents festooned with beautiful Rajasthani fabrics and carpets, Victorian-style furniture (a large wooden double bed, a chest of drawers, armchairs) and - joy of joys - a bathroom, with sink and flushing loo ingeniously rigged up using a tank of water on a boulder and a drain to take away the waste water. This was my kind of camping. Around a fire we sampled single malts from the drinks cabinet before sitting down to a banquet cooked by Reggie's chefs. Local shepherds, dressed all in white save for their crimson turbans, whirled around us in a traditional dance, clacking their staffs together and trying to outdo each other with the virtuosity of their individual performances. Later, ensconced in our tents with their drapes of mosquito nets, we fell asleep to the call of the lapwings. Such was the comfort of my surroundings I was contemplating a lie-in, but I was woken by our excited children pointing out an enormous crocodile lying in the watering hole, which we had failed to spot the night before. It was just 50 yards away and Reggie's guards had stayed up all night, guns at the ready, should one of the crocs feel peckish. After a giant feast of our own - breakfast of bacon and eggs and endless pots of tea - it was time to bid farewell to our camp: the thing I had most dreaded, which had turned out to be wonderful. Two hours away we visited Ranakpur , the spectacular white carved marble Jain temples built in the 15th century, hidden away in a wooded valley in the Aravalli hills. We had to cover ourselves in Abigail's Party -style kaftans for modesty, which left the children in fits of laughter. It was, I'm afraid, only a whistle-stop tour and we rather short-changed the marvels of Ranakpur, as tummies were rumbling with hunger. The marble interior of one of Ranakpur's Jain temples. Ahead lay our final stop, Reggie's new lodge on the border of the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary . We drove through a landscape where fields were being tended, hay was being gathered Pissarro-style, wooden waterwheels irrigated the soil and women walked at the roadside, thin and dirty but dressed in deep pinks and oranges, with heavy silver jewellery round their necks and in their noses. As usual, we were met with an extravagant welcome from Reggie; this time he'd arranged a brightly-decorated elephant to carry us up the path to the lodge. We entered a compound of stone villas, not yet finished but exquisitely designed by Reggie, each one with a spacious layout made with luxurious lounging in mind. There were beds in front of outdoor fires for cool evenings or nights under the stars, and plunge pools for hot, hazy afternoons. Fiona Bruce and her family travel to their lodge by elephant. Image: Fiona Bruce We lunched under the shade of a 300-year-old banyan tree while Reggie talked of his plans for the lodge: elephant safaris as the sun sets across the Aravalli plain, horse rides in the wildlife sanctuary. This is where his three-day Marwar tour ends. For us it had been an incredible journey; for the children, far and away the most exciting part of our trip to India. I conquered my phobia of camping, although I doubt I'll be pitching my tent at a muddy estival any time soon. Unless, that is, Reggie is the host. Abercrombie & Kent can organise a 12-night trip to Rajasthan, to include the Marwar Experience, from £3,795 per person, based on two sharing, including b&b accommodation, flights and transfers.