Mumbai, India

5.30am and our driver awaits. Coman loads the car while I struggle to leave the bathroom. Bowing to the inevitable I chuck some Immodium down my throat and hope for the best. We drive round to Rikki's guesthouse as she's also travelling back to Mumbai and the three of us pass the journey to the airport making increasingly scatalogical jokes to the bemusement of our driver and guide who studiously ignore us in the front.

The chaos of Goa's airport is evident as we approach. Outside the entrance is a disorganised throng of startlingly sunburnt holidaymakers, disgorged from a coach, all frazzled highlights, peeling tattoos and chunky gold jewellery glinting through the fag smoke. They're trying to make their way through the narrow opening and past the two security guards who laboriously study each separate document before stamping it in triplicate.

Our guide is having none of it and with our luggage piled high on a trolley he deftly powers his way through the throng with us following in his wake, giving apologetic shrugs at every evil eye cast in our direction. Miraculously, within moments we've made it to the front of the queue, past check-in and through security without incident. The package-tour, still resentfully queuing for their Monarch flight back to sunny Manchester, are by now separated from us by glass and have to board through another gate. Crisis averted.

Looking round I spot a familiar face. "Oh look," I point, "it's Janet Street Porter". She's looking straight at me. And instantly turns on her heel to sit with a friend about as far away as she can from the red-faced, incontinent upstart who's just loudly announced her presence. Strangely, when she boards she takes a seat up in first class while her poor friend is down the back with the rest of us. Fackin' champagne socialism.

We say goodbye to Rikki at Mumbai airport. She has a wait ahead of her for the return flight to London while our new driver is bang on time, ready to take us into the hustle and bustle of Mumbai.

Vijay, with his lustrously dyed black hair and twinkly eyes, proves a mine of information, revealing that he, along with many Mumbaikars, still reveres the British and we're much to be praised. Coman rolls his eyes, declining to point out he's Irish as that's proved an interminably long point to explain previously. So I smugly lap up the compliments. Special vitriol from Vijay is reserved for the people in Delhi who rule the country. Eurgh! They are so rude!! And uncivilized....

Vijay tells us how Mumbai came by its recent appellation in 1995 when it was renamed by the pro-Maratha (indigenous) ruling party in honour of the goddess Mumba who was worshipped by the original fisher-folk thousands of years ago. Known still to many of its residents as Bombay, it comprises seven islands which have now merged into a sprawling single landmass, home to 20 million people.

Every day eight million people commute into the main station on the trains, many piled high on the roofs, resulting in roughly 100 deaths a day on the Mumbai rail network! This is perhaps because no tuktuks are allowed in the city meaning that it is the preserve of cars and their owners, so many people travel instead on trains or the big red buses, a legacy of British rule.

Fortunately it is Saturday so the roads are relatively clear. Vijay warns us that on weekdays the traffic is horrendous, but as we cruise into town the drive reveals a remarkably civilized city. No cows walk the streets, pavements line the roads, rubbish isn't piled high, people stay in lane, horns are used with (relative) restraint, there are flyovers, signs flashing "Fasten Seatbelts" and traffic lights controlling the flow. Mumbai seems ordered, structured and almost calm.

As we drive further into the city it reminds me of another glistening, emergent metropolis, a powerhouse of a huge new economy; Sao Paolo. It shares the gleaming new skyscrapers, the affluent apartment blocks for its middle class professionals, its sense of wealth and pride. And as the favelas of Brazil are never far away, the slums of Mumbai are highly visible. They line the airport perimeter, a grim tableau as we come into land, and they stretch along the highway that brings us from the airport in the northern suburbs down to the affluent south where they disappear, the only sign women tapping on car windows begging for change.

As we come further into the southern reaches of Mumbai with its parks full of families, parades, cricket matches and grand buildings, the warm morning light and lush foliage changes the city again; with a certain squint this could be Sydney or San Francisco but then we sweep out onto Marine Drive, the long promenade that circles the bay lined with art deco edifices alongside its palm tree boulevard and suddenly this feels like Miami.

It certainly doesn't feel like the India of the north, the dirty chaos of Delhi and the desert nature of Rajasthan, and it's a million miles away from the ramshackle pleasures of Goa. This is a modern city at the forefront of India, the heart of the media, the home of Bollywood, the advertising face of an India that sits proudly in the G20 and has muscle, style and poise.

As we drive along the length of Marine Drive towards our hotel Vijay tells us cheerily. "Tomorrow is Mumbai marathon. Big event, whole Marine Drive will be closed. Starts outside your hotel. Very nice hotel The Trident, very posh, you will like it," and then without missing a beat, "it was terrorist siege last year. Very nice." Hmmm, I'm not sure the gun-toting murderers were actually after a holiday.

The security checks before we, and especially our luggage, are allowed into the hotel are most stringent. Checkpoints, mirrors shoved underneath the car, metal detectors, body-searches and x-rays for all bags. It's more effort to get to our room than it was to get on the plane earlier today. But eventually we get to our room. It's 11.30am by now, time for a little siesta.

We awake an hour later and decide to head to the pool. My stomach is still making all sorts of gurgling, chemical factory noises and I'm producing enough flatulence to both stun and deafen a small army but my appetite is back so while we sunbathe we order french fries into which I tuck with gusto. Ah, this is what I need.

Back at the room however, with the Immodium wearing off it's obvious that the french fries were maybe not such a good idea. It's been three days now, and a bowl of fries is about the most I've eaten in that time, and even they don't want to stay in my stomach.

However, in spite of four visits to the bathroom in just 20 minutes, I decide that come hell or high water, we are going to visit the big daddy of all Mumbai hotels, the Taj Mahal right next to the Gateway to India. A historical landmark of the city, this is also where the 2008 terrorists committed the most carnage, killing scores of staff and guests as they rampaged through its hallowed rooms. This, much more so than The Trident or the train station - both brutally attacked as well - was the main image on the news. Especially as many well-heeled English tourists were staying there.

They reopened the hotel just three weeks after the attacks, and now we were going to see quite how splendid the hotel is and participate in a tradition unchanged since it was constructed in the 19th Century; the taking of high tea. The french fries have just whetted my appetite. Who cares if they've just flown through me at the speed of light. More food is required...

Disappointingly, my vision of a grand ballroom, serving fabulous high teas, seems somewhat overblown. Sure enough we climb a suitably lavish staircase to enter, but the Sea Lounge where we are shown to our table is more like a breakfast parlour than a stately chamber. In the middle a pianist gently tinkles away, through the window is an obscured view of the harbour and in the corner is a help-yourself buffet. But despite the fact this obviously is not the Ritz I'm so starving by now I dive right in.

Cucumber sandwiches, cream cheese bagels, mini croissants, french fancies, little tartlets, scones with cream and jam, chocolate fondants and a pot of fine darjeeling are eagerly consumed. But on a table nearby, our appetite is proved merely amateur.

A couple of Chinese girls are obviously out to bankrupt the Taj Mahal, making repeat visits to the dwindling buffet, piling their plates high and barely pausing for breath as they stuff savoury, sweet and all points in between down their throats with sheer abandon. It's like watching seals at feeding time at the zoo as buckets of fish are flung at them and they swallow them all down in huge, lunging gulps. The waiting staff haven't seen anything like it. One of the girls is only about 4ft 7.

By the time we have finished it's dawning on me that our expensive indulgence in cream teas and cakes is going to be wasted. The grumblings in my stomach have come back to haunt me and within moments so have the contents of the buffet. A frantic dash back to the Trident hotel later, thankfully via taxi rather than the balloon-festooned horse-drawn carriages touting outside, and we grab the concierge.

"Call a doctor. I think I need medical help..."