Travels: Thailand/India 1997

Travel Letter #4

Delhi, 16th of May, 1997

Thank you all very much for all the letters (paper and electronic) that we received here in Delhi. Since it was one long month since last time we were able to pick up post, the mail this time was all the more appreciated. Snailmail can still be send to us in Delhi for a few more days. We'll probably see the last of Delhi by the end of May, mail takes about a week to get here. Same adress (AmEx Travel Service). For the next couple of weeks email will not be available for us. But we'll send you a fax number later which you can use in the meantime. Our destinations in June will be outlined later - when we have made up our minds!

Connecting is half the fun, part 2

It turned out that Internet and India is not that good combination after all. As I wrote in last letter, Darjeeling had no Internet connectivity. Neither had Varanasi. We learned it the hard way. First we went to the University, one of the prides of India. Of course there was a computer department there, but we met the wrong person at the wrong day, and he refused to give us access to their system. But we could go to an office in the outskirts of the city, 45 minutes by scooter-rickshaw. This office looked like a computer-equipped cow-stall in the middle of nowhere with a huge satellite-disc on the roof. But they had no direct Internet access, we had to use their address, they had to send it all by satellite to Bangalore which is about 2000 km away, and from there it would be transmitted to Interned. Not very useful for us.

We have now learned that India is hopelessly lacking behind in the information revolution. The government has monopolized Internet access through one agency until the year 2006, it's damned expensive to use, even for European standards ($430 for 500 hours log-on time), and there are only direct access from the biggest cities (2-3 millions +). The result is only 30.000 subscribers in a country with 1.000.000.000 people - that's even less than little Norway! Even in Delhi, it's capitol, there are only a couple of places where people like me can go and do their communicating, and it's still robbing us for rupees. So, the letters you people receive are now very precious, and have cost us a lot of investigation and money! The place I found here is a small office that offers phonecalls and fax facilities. Upstairs a young sikh rent out his computer and Internet connection in his family's house. He has asked the government if what he does is legal, but it seems not even they know!