India diary: Days seven and eight - Hot in 'Hi-Tec' Hyderabad

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.

20/4/04: After the relative greenery of tree-lined Bangalore, I am now across the country in the city of Hyderabad. When I arrived late in the evening yesterday, the air was still warm and heavy with pollution. I took a rickety white colonial-style Ambassador taxi from the airport, a journey that included one flyover after another as we passed featureless grey concrete buildings. There is still some beautiful architecture left in Hyderabad from its heyday during the Raj but most of it has been levelled and built on.

The first round of elections is in full swing now and it ensures that today, my first full day in Hyderabad, most businesses are closed. In the big cities like this there isn't usually much political violence at election time but someone at the hotel tells me there was a death in the old part of the city related to the elections.

Hyderabad, a cosmopolitan mix of Hindu and Islamic culture, is in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Although some people might be starting to think I'm obsessed about the availability of alcohol, I'm not but as a thirsty western traveller the start of the elections today means there's not a drop of alcohol to be found anywhere in the city - even in the hotel bar.

Relief from the 40-degree centigrade heat comes later in the evening with a brief monsoon-style downpour during which rain bounces off the streets. It eases after an hour and by the morning the roads are dry again.

21/4/04: Today I head to one of the 'Silicon Valley' areas of India, currently rated the number one place to locate your facilities – Hi-Tec City. On the 20 km journey out of Hyderabad the landscape becomes rocky and barren. In the distance two vast buildings loom on the horizon like something out of Star Wars - the Cyber Tower and Cyber Gateway complexes.

Many companies are housed in these buildings, as opposed to the individual campus layout of Bangalore's Electronics City. The taxi passes India's number three IT company Tata Consultancy Services, which has its own huge circular complex in the area.

I notice much more building work going on at Hi-Tec City compared to Bangalore; many of the big western IT companies are opening facilities here. I pass a tract of land that is being developed by Oracle and, more significantly, a little way out of Hi-Tec City a 42.25 acre site that's just a few bricks high at the moment but which is the new home of Microsoft's first Indian campus due to open next year.

A high-tech worker walks beneath the towering space-age complexes in Hi-Tec City.

In the afternoon, I return to the centre of Hyderabad for a meeting with the chairman of India's number four IT company Satyam, which passes the half-billion dollar revenue mark while I'm in the country.

While Satyam also has the obligatory modern high-tech complex out of the city, I meet the chairman in the office where the company was started and still has a small presence. The office sits on top of a row of shops and cafés and a stench of a polluted river hangs in the air. The '70s era concrete building wouldn't look out of place in Slough but I'm told the chairman has a sentimental attachment to the office because of its links with Satyam's roots. Inside, of course, the place is spotless.

As the wind starts whipping up what feels like another storm outside, it's time to grab another of the fantastic white Ambassador taxis and head to the airport for the final leg of my journey - New Delhi.