Vincent touches down in Mumbai where he's struck by the disparity between rich and poor. To learn more about how the super-rich are catered for, Vincent visits the five-star Taj Mahal Palace Hotel where themed suites and 24-hour butlers cost in excess of £1000 per night.

He also meets some of the city's 'dabbawalas', a largely illiterate group of men who use public transport to deliver home cooked lunches to offices across the city. If they can't read or write how do they deliver each lunch to the correct address? Vincent also meets some of the men and women working in Dhobi Ghat - the world's biggest outdoor laundry - and he samples some of the city's delicious Persian cuisine in an Irani cafe.

Vincent's grandfather made a sea voyage in 1899 to begin a new life in South Africa. This journey might have begun in Mumbai, or Bombay as it then was. Vincent meets a city historian at the old passenger docks to learn more about Indian emigration and to imagine what his grandfather might have been thinking and feeling as he left his homeland.

Vincent's second stop is Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat and home to the civil rights leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi, like Vincent's grandfather, also travelled to South Africa as a young man. Gandhi's experience of injustices in South Africa helped galvanise his later political thinking. Ahmedabad was also where Gandhi began his famous Salt March in 1930, an act of civil disobedience to protest British rule in India. One legacy of Gandhi is that Gujarat remains a dry state - the sale of alcohol is prohibited here - so Vincent joins a group of students for a Saturday night on the town, to see how they relax and socialise.

He also throws himself into the deep end of a Bollywood dance class and goes behind the scenes at one of the country's top business schools to meet the next generation of entrepreneurs.

It's monsoon season so Vincent, like people for centuries before him, leaves the heat and bustle of the plains behind and travels into the foothills of the Himalayan mountain range to see India's natural beauty. He joins a local photographer on a nature walk into the forest outside the town.

As the crow flies, McLeod Ganj is only 130 miles from the border with China - it's no surprise that the Dalai Lama chose here to be the seat of his Tibetan government in exile. Vincent meets Rinchon, a young monk, to have a tour around the Dalai Lama's monastery. He also gets stuck into a cookery class and gets to live his dream and ride an iconic Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike around the winding mountain roads.

No trip to India would be complete without a visit to the capital, Delhi. It's the seat of political and economic power, the epitome of vibrant modern India, but it's also historically one of the most important Mughal towns in the country. The wide manicured boulevards of the planned city of New Delhi sit up against the maze of narrow streets of the old city.

Vincent ventures deep into the little lanes to sample some street food delights. Ancient temples jostle for space with glass-fronted shopping malls. Vincent is curious to visit a dilapidated fort where people come from across the country to make offerings to spirits who can grant wishes: djinns, the root of the English word 'genie'.

He also visits a shrine to experience a qawwali recital - a form of sufi devotional music that he last heard live in London. Finally, Vincent heads to see a night of stand-up comedy: a burgeoning scene, fuelled by the growing middle class looking for entertainment outside of film and television.

Vincent is visiting the Taj Mahal, or at least he's trying to. He wants to witness the sun rising over the white marble building as he's heard it's an almost spiritual experience. His visit begins in the middle of the night in Delhi as he jumps in a cab bound for Agra.

The 17th-century mausoleum built on the banks of the Yamuna river by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was built for his wife Mumtaz. It's believed that around twenty thousand workers toiled for more than two decades to complete a construction that cost, in today's money, in the region of 530 million pounds.

Aside from its monuments, Agra is known for its leather industry, records of which can be traced back to the city for hundreds of years. Even Mughal emperors sent courtiers to have footwear made by the local artisans, using the finest leather. Vincent wants to get beyond the tourist trail and under the skin of the place to understand what is means when something is 'Made in India'.

Vincent is joined by his son Emile, who has flown out to help Vincent complete his trip. Together they board a train in Delhi bound for their destination in West Bengal, some 1400km away. The journey will take 26 hours and involves eating and sleeping within the confines of a sleeper carriage.

As the ever-changing landscape rolls by the window, the pair share jokes and memories. They also cope with smelly loos, feelings of claustrophobia and food that appears seemingly at random.

Vincent and his son Emile head into the Himalayan foothills. This time to explore Darjeeling, a town as famous for its mountaineers as its tea. It's a former British hill station and is where some of the British Raj would come in the summer months to escape the heat of the plains and to take in the mountain air.

Vincent meets Dorjee Lhatoo, a retired sherpa now in his 70s who, in 1984, accompanied Bachendri Pal to the summit of Everest. She was the first Indian woman ever to make the ascent. Together they visit the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, a training camp for mountaineers and a museum to India's proud Sherpa heritage.

It's also home to the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, whose narrow gauge trains use a series of switch-backs and loops to gain more than 2100 vertical metres, climbing from the plains up into the hills. Originally intended to connect passengers and tea leaves with the port at Kolkata, the railway still runs a full timetable: much of it using the original steam locomotives, some of which are more than 125 years old.

Vincent and his son Emile reach the final stop of their journey: Kolkata in the east of India. The pair visit a tailor's shop to buy some authentic traditional dress, sample some street food and even try their hand at driving a tuk-tuk on the city streets.

As the journey progressed Vincent has felt increasingly certain that, before sailing to start a new life in South Africa, his grandfather originally came from a village called Tisa, just outside of Kolkata. Vincent and Emile make the journey up to Tisa to see what kind of place it is and in the hope of learning something more.