The first 'fully commissioned in India' programme for Discovery - Indian Rendezvous - an idea incorporated by the team of producers/directors Adi Dadabhoy, Ajit Oommen and Navieta Chawla of Aaria Productions. They speak of the experiences they had during the shoots and the challenges involved in making a travel series for an international audience.

What did you do differently to try and give international audiences more than what's shown in the best of travel programs, guide, sites?

We were looking more at a slice of life experience. Since every city has a unique personality, we tried to reflect the character of each city. Mumbai, we showed the frenetic pace of life, Bangalore with a chilled out atmosphere, Hyderabad about Nawabi culture. Per se Discovery was not looking at new things, but at something to highlight each city interestingly for the travelers and also the people belonging to that city. Like everybody knew about polo in Hyderabad but were not aware about arena polo. Or when a man spoke about 200-300 models of aeroplanes, how he takes planes from arena to runway, for director/anchor Nagesh Kukunoor it was a great experience.

With every city we mixed the already known with the unknown, to cater to markets in India and abroad. Likewise actor/anchor Konkana Sen Sharma had never done tea tasting so she was taken to the oldest tea houses in Kolkata where she actually went through the process of tasting. The whole idea was to portray an India which is modern.

India is always projected for its historic beauty, did you want to give it a new western feel, reflecting a global India?

We did a recce, traveled to all cities, gathered information, had 25 topics to discuss per city, passed over to Discovery. We also had inputs from the respective anchors of different cities. The channel wanted us to portray India being a financial hub, an emerging country and also include key areas like Bollywood. We were asked to focus on history of Delhi, moving to street food, ballooning melas etc. Sarod player/anchor Ayaan Ali Bangash had never been to ballooning club of India. We clubbed sports culture with every city.

Representative celebrities were not well versed with their own cities, in spite they being hardcore city bred...

It is natural that people living in their own city are not thoroughly well versed about them. People didn't know that Delhi is the advente capital of India. Like in Mumbai we showed CCI cricket, spoke about Jazz and Louis Banks. In Bangalore Singer/actor/anchor Vansundra Das discovered Joe Bikers where every weekend bikers go for trips and their wives follow them. For Vasundhra Das it was a big rush.

Definitely… Konkana Sen's mother had done 34 series on Kolkatta, there is no end to discovery, the show was meant to be fast and breezy. When we started the topic with Koli fisherman, the whole focus gave city a different light, not being negative. Shining India was the tagline.

What made Discovery choose them...

We were competing with UTV. While giving the tenders, we simultaneously gave concepts, and got short listed and made the pilot programme in July 2004. The rains became our lucky mascot.

Selection of Celeb... New Delhi with sarod player Ayaan Ali Khan, Mumbai with model Sushama Reddy, Bangalore with singer / actor Vasundhra Das, Chennai with actor / model Meera Vasudevan, Hyderabad with director Nagesh Kukunoor and Kolkata with actor Konkona Sen.

Since it was conceived as a youthful, peppy show, we chose anchors from different fields with different cities. Like Aman had spunkiness and Tehzeeb. Comfort level between interviewee and interviewer was taken care of by the anchors themselves. We gave a wish list of five anchors per city to the Channel. Nagesh, being a director himself, understood what we were looking at. To make show more interesting he popped up with ideas since he knew what goes on at other side of fence.

Time spent to shoot in each city...

We shot 9 days per city. In Kolkata during shoots, daylight was a constant problem. The Hyderabad shoot had no hitches. A lot of things were lost because of Tsunami on Marine Beach in Chennai. In Delhi it was the Lajpat Nagar Blast, one of the first that Delhi viewed and suffered.