And it is raining. After a big thunderstorm last night, with high winds, and brief electrical outages, it is settling down to a steady (but light) rain here in Dharamsala.

I am crashing (an American expression from Hippie days meaning “unwanted occupation of”) the IT office at Men-Tsee-Khang (the Tibetan medicine and astrological center) where Dawa Tsering (see photo) is giving me an internet connection. Men-Tsee-Khang is one of the NGOs that uses the Dharamsala Mesh, and Dawa says that their Internet connections have been reliable and fast ever since they connected to the mesh. Another testimonial to the power of communities working together!

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Four days before the opening session of AirJaldi. The (large) hall is empty except for the resounding echo of pop music that Yahel is using to test the sound system. The mixer board sits in the middle of the first row in the auditorium, and Yahel is “wildly mixing,” and muttering under his breath about getting rid of the 50 cycle hum. And concluding that the circuits are on different phases (you understand that, of course). And then plugging into a different plug and all of a sudden the hum disappears.

So “situation normal” for Day-minus-4 at any event, I’d say. [Read more…]

My friend Arjun pointed out to me that Indians view this country as “Mother India.” The first time I visited India, in early 2005, I had what I suppose is a typical reaction for Americans – I could just not believe how many people there were everywhere! As someone pointed out, India has 1.2 billion souls – four times the population of the U.S. – in an area 1/7th the size of the U.S. So everywhere I turn I see not only people, but many times as many people as experience leads me to expect.

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My friends are constantly going back and forth from San Francisco to Australia, and I understand that these flights are among the truly gueling contests of bottoms-against-seats in the entire world. In past trips to India, I have flown to Europe first, which is about a 10-hour flight, and had a civilized layover of a day or so, and then continued on an 8-hour flight to Delhi. Breaking up the “seat time” like that can be quite enjoyable. Some carriers even have Internet access onboard, and although the bandwidth is only a trickle, it’s enough that it provides significant connectivity with the outside world. (On past trips to India I have had limited Internet access in-country, and getting on a flight that allows me to trickle the email in, and then take a look at it before I hit Europe, can give me a head-start on those important messages that have been arriving in my inbox while I was away from the Internet.)

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