India diary: Day one – London to Mumbai

silicon.com reporter Andy McCue was on assignment in India from 14 to 23 April investigating offshoring efforts in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi. This is his diary. Articles and commentary on IT offshoring and BPO in India and elsewhere will be appearing on silicon.com over the coming weeks. You can find them all here.

14/4/04: India, for those who haven't been before and as those who have will tell you, can be a bewildering culture shock to the western traveller - especially the business traveller - used to the comforts of European and US trips. Yet it is a trip more and more western business people are taking as the offshoring phenomenon takes off.

Whether it is to see for themselves what is out in India by way of high-tech development and services, or to keep tabs on operations already outsourced to the subcontinent, the first port of call is Mumbai, usually emerging after a tiring long-haul flight in the dark early hours of the morning.

That is where my journey begins, in the city that many residents still prefer to call Bombay, rather than the new name given to it by the now ousted Hindu nationalist party, the BJP. I'm bundled jet-lagged out of an Emirates flight from London via Dubai at around 4am in Mumbai airport. The airport seems run down despite being a major international hub and the first thing the bleary-eyed traveller is faced with is queues - immigration is cumbersome, followed by a free-for-all on a rickety baggage carousel, which spits out all manner of imaginatively packaged parcels and brand new widescreen TVs from Dubai airport duty free.

Finally I emerge from the melee at 5am into the warm, dusty Mumbai air. Having converted some pounds to rupees at the government exchange in the arrivals hall and then booked a pre-paid taxi, I walk out of the terminal with my cab driver to be met with an overwhelming sea of faces that seems to be five high and at least as many deep. It is a familiar scene that the jet-lagged business person will face and is described in Mark Kobayashi-Hillary's book Outsourcing to India.

The pre-paid taxi avoids any potential scams that travellers to India are warned about, the main one usually being a taxi driver who agrees to take you to your hotel only to stop halfway and remember suddenly that your hotel isn't there any more - "it's closed down", he'll say. Handily he'll know another hotel - from which he'll get commission - and offer to take you there instead. But it's quite an old scam now and doesn't happen as frequently as some guide books would have you believe as long as you're fairly sensible.

The 20-minute, 500-rupee (£6) fare (extortionate by Indian standards) to Juhu Beach, about 30km north of downtown Mumbai, is thankfully air-conditioned. I pass through deserted neighbourhoods interrupted only by barking packs of stray dogs scavenging in the bins and gutters and the buzz of a lone yellow and black motorised rickshaw. Travellers staying in Mumbai itself face a much longer one to two hour journey into the city, which is more likely to shock with its passage through one of the city's many slum neighbourhoods. For me, I'm finally off to bed at 6am.