Of course I’m exaggerating! We did not trek the entire Himalayas – only the foothills near McLeod Ganj to see a few antennas. In fact it was quite civilized except for the appearance of rain showers and a few lightning strikes during the afternoon. We began from TCV, the site of all AirJaldi activites, and hiked up above the TCV and across an upper trail where we had great views of McLeod Ganj below and the entire valley way below us at times. Most of trekking was on narrow trails that follow water pipes. Water is extracted high on the hills and piped down to where it is used thus creating a natural pressure. It’s enough pressure to be perfectly usable. [Read more…]

I chose to ignore the call for “staff” to appear at 6:30am to begin set-up and from now on considered myself only a “guest” at this event. Even though in my way I’ve been doing everything I could to help since arriving here.

By 7:15 am I left the hotel and sauntered down the main street toward the taxi stand some distance away. The sun was struggling with the clouds, and barely winning. A few shopkeepers were beginning to raise their corrugated roll-up doors, but there was not much activity on the street yet. The few beggars were in their accustomed spots with cheerful faces and “good morning sir, how are you?” A couple of food shops and stands were opening. I reached the square and there was one three-wheeler taxi still there. What I thought was really cool was that every taxi driver without exception had a mouthful of toothpaste that he was scrubbing with a toothbrush and spitting out onto the street – simultaneously as if the urge had hit all of them at the same time. More than any other reaction I would just say that this amused me to no end – I almost broke out laughing – or perhaps I though it was a scene from a 1950’s musical where they were all about to break into song and dance! [Read more…]

Many of my readers will be familiar with this – but I wanted to mention it for those to whom it’s new. McLeod Ganj (in upper Dharamsala) is an area where the old and the new meet. Tibetan refugees make up the bulk of the population in this small section of the larger city, and it’s way up on the hillside just below 6,000 feet elevation. Above it rise the foothills of the western Himalayas (more precisely the Dhaula Dahr – a spur of the Himalayan range) and those we can see, which still have significant snow on them, peak at maybe 12,000 feet, and are quite steep.

As is the case for most of India, electricity and communications are relatively modern. The electricity fails frequently, and on the day I arrived, the power had been out since morning and only returned at 5pm. It was a bit unusual, but very few people were bothered by it, and most of life continued without interruption. (One exception being the phones in the hotels, which depend on a PBX to power and connect their extensions.) Most people and businesses with electronic equipment have uninterruptable power supplies (UPSs) and these will at least power their computers for a few minutes during short interruptions. many have put together large banks of automobile batteries and inverters (that change DC from the batteries to the required AC to power electrical devices) in order to power their computers far longer. The UPSs also filter the incoming power to reduce voltage fluctuations, and anyone considering an expensive computer automatically figures they’ll need a UPS. [Read more…]

So I was at the registration booth on Temple Road, kind of squatting down holding my computer on my lap, and fully connected to the “mesh” network so I could pick up email and then create an up-to-date registration list, and felt someone tapping my shoulder. The tap was Jim Forster (see photo to the right), who has been a supporter of AirJaldi since day one. I had only met with Jim once in the San Francisco Bay Area, although we’ve been in constant touch by email, and of course here he is in McLeod Ganj the day before AirJaldi begins. We’ve faced a few last-minute challenges (such as obtaining the large projector for the big auditorium), which I helped a little bit in coordinating, Jim helped in funding, and Tim Kiely helped in “transportation.” [Read more…]