India diary, day 1: Cyberbad on Sunday

Sunday 4 February - Hyderabad

The cab driver leans hard on the horn as we race past a motorbike upon which mum, dad and two small children are precariously balanced. None wearing helmets, of course.

The road is crammed with swarms of bicycles, motorised rickshaws, gaily painted trucks and pedestrians who step out into the traffic at random.

Special Report: Inside India

In February silicon.com's Steve Ranger visited the Indian tech hotspots of Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to explore the exploding Indian offshore tech and BPO industry. Keep up with his daily diaries here.

♦ India diary, day 1: Cyberbad on Sunday
♦ India diary, day 2: Emergency calls and rural life
♦ India diary, day 3: Inside the outsourcing campus
♦ India diary, day 4: Hyderabad's tech park
♦ India diary, day 5: Margaritas to Mumbai
♦ India diary, day 6: Prime Minister's question time
♦ India diary, day 7: Mobiles in Mumbai
♦ India diary, day 8: Pune or bust
♦ India diary, day 9: An auto-rickshaw ride and a catwalk show
♦ India diary, day 10: Lost in Pune
♦ India diary, day 11: I heart Bangalore
♦ India diary, day 12: Searching for the next big thing
♦ India diary, day 13: Thirsty in Bangalore

It's been eight hours since I touched down in India but it's only now that I feel like I've arrived.

Up to this point I've been in a business traveller bubble. Arriving in India the Mumbai international terminal is much like any other large hub airport, clean and bright, and despite horror tales of epic waits at immigration I was through much faster than I ever have been at a US or UK airport. Baggage reclaim wasn't the free-for-all that I'd been fearing either.

Sadly checking in for the flight up to Hyderabad was much more painful - a long and slow queue to hand over our luggage and then a hot and irritating hour waiting for the bus to the domestic terminal.

This was much more the India I had expected - much more in keeping with the five hours I'd spent at the High Commission applying for my journalist visa the week before.

Still, the domestic terminal is so new I could still smell the paint, gleaming and futuristic like a space port. The bookshops are crammed with management books, which tells you lots about the types of passengers that pass through here - executives on their way to the IT hubs or exploring the booming Indian market.

I'm making that journey too, to find out as much as I can about the Indian tech industry, why it has got so big so fast - and what the future holds.

I'm going to be visiting Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore. Each of these cities are big centres for offshoring and I want to find out what is making them successful, and how the UK is using them.

Hyderabad is my first stop and after a quick snooze to knock off some of the jetlag I'm out and exploring.

Despite the tech millions pouring into 'Cyberbad', at first glance it's hard to see where the cash has gone. There is still quite a dusty small town feel, apart from some familiar chain stores - the Reebok, Nike and Marks & Spencer - that are cropping up.

But that is changing. There's a lot of construction going on - although in many cases it's hard to see whether the buildings are being put up or pulled down. In some cases it's probably both at once.

You can't really go for a walk in Hyderabad because in many places there isn't much in the way of pavement. Most people just stick to walking on the road if they have to. Where there is a pavement, it is used as a handy place for piles of rubble, electricity sub-stations, billboards and even sleep. But not for walking.

But not everybody is happy with the changes. Today's Mumbai Mirror carries a story quoting Hyderabadis that are unhappy about changes the IT developments are bringing, worrying they will rob the city of its identity.

After a break I head out to the big tourist attractions in town - the Golconda Fort. It's pretty impressive and the light show is fun. From the top you can see the high-tech industrial park on the edge of town. I'll be visiting that later in the week.

And then it's back to the hotel and into the identikit Dublin Bar for a beer. Watching English football on a US TV channel in a mock Irish bar in the basement of a hotel in Hyderabad is a practical example of globalisation in action, so maybe it's a fitting end to my first day here. The real work starts tomorrow.

Have you visited India to check out the outsourcing options? Or have you been affected by offshoring here in the UK? We want to hear your stories about India. Leave your comments below or email editorial@silicon.com.