It’s the calm before the storm. Day 1 of Tata Jagriti Yatra starts off very early. 5.30am rise from our slumber and a brisk shower. The wireless signal is flagging in the guest room where we’re stay and so the uploads from last night have failed. I tip toe out to the common room and place the laptop on the dining table and start the youtube and flickr uploads again and sneak back to my bedroom to complete last minute packing.  The sound outside the bedroom window at 5.30am is almost deafening! There are black crows squawking all over the place, yet day break is no-where to be seen. Traffic noise and people shouting and talking is drowning out any sense of tranquility or calm I would have normally expected anywhere else in India or indeed back home in London. The city of Mumbai truly lives up to its reputation as a never sleeping, never ending 24/7 place where no man or women has a rest.

The first of the yatra begins shortly with a 8.30am trip out to a part of Mumbai called Prabhdevi, where our African contingent are staying. We’ll be picking them up by taxi and taking all eight of them to the yatri orientation workshop up in IIT Mumbai which is loated in Powai, a good two hour road trip up in the northern outskirts of greater Mumbai. The orientation session will be similar to the facilitator work shop from yesterday but geared totally towards the yatri’s. They’ll get to meet each other, all 350 of them, for the first time. Many have been travelling down to Mumbai from all over India in large groups, having previously met up a few days back at “Tatat Jagriti Yatra meeting ups” in their own towns and cities. It’ll be interesting to see what cliques and groups have already formed and subsequently how we’ll manage that.

Yatri’s will begin to pour in to IIT Mumbai for registration at around 9am to 12pm and from around 13:00 we’ll start off the yatri orientation workshop which will end towards 2pm. Following this, the yatri’s will get to meet some stellar business and social entrepreneurs - namely Manish Tripathi and Jyoti Naik who will give a talk about their startups and organisations.  At 15:30 we all set off for the flagging off ceremony in Mumbai Central station. Gauri Sharma Tripathi, a well known Indian classical dancer from the South Bank Centre in London, where she is an artist in residence, will be performing a dance to kick off the proceedings at the train station followed by presentations and short speeches by various reps from Tata and then engines will fire up and the train will start to head out of Mumbai, initially north and then to branch out to the east and curve back down south, heading towards our second stop, Thiruvananthapuram, formerly known as Trivandrum.

As I sit here typing this blog entry, the full magnitude of the yatra has yet to sink in. I’ve been involved with this whole project right from day one. Although I’ve been involved with the minutia of all the planning, strategizing and build-up, I don’t think I will know what has hit me until I get on the train and start to see the landscape of India flow past. The yatra is going to be a unique experience for me and for everyone else who attends it. Each of us will take back our own learnings and we’ll also form our own opinions of what have to be done to improve the lives of millions of people who are still living below the poverty line. Above all, I hope ths yatra teaches us all about the importance of close collaboration; the ability to be able to bring together bright young minds and not fight each other based on ego or how more qualified we are compared to the next person; but instead learn to leverage the wisdom of the crowd, the power that lies within true group collaboration and work towards a common and unified future.

We’ll have laptops and datacards on the train, but I cannot guarentee that our connection will be constant or even fast enough to be able to blog, however, I urge you all the check back on this blog and at the official yatri blog throughout the full duration of the yatra, 24th Dec 2008 to 11th Jan 2009. We’ll endeavour to update this blog and also upload photos to our flickr group and youtube pages.