While we’re waiting for the rain to stop, I thought I’d add a bit about another aspect to travel in Nepal: communication.
In the developed world, we take communication for granted: cell phones, text messages, internet, etc. Living the last two years in Japan, we were highly connected with iPhones that could receive messages, tell the weather, and translate Japanese into English. We could call anywhere in the world for nothing using Skype.
Being a communication junkie, I spent about $8 on a prepaid SIM card for my mobile phone, so that I could have a local Nepal number and call the US for only $1 per minute instead of $4. It works surprisingly well, and I can buy recharge cards as often as I want.
On our first full day of delays in Nepalgunj, all the phone lines went out just as everyone wanted information on delayed flights. All the phones except my local mobile phone! For most of the day, all the travelers were borrowing my cheap little phone as the only way to communicate with Kathmandu.
Some of my communication problems came from the other side of the world. I realized I had forgotten to schedule a loan payment at Bank of America. This would have normally been routine, but BofA’s website insisted on sending a code by text message to my US-based iPhone before it would let me into its website. And my iPhone had no reception in Nepal! Calling the bank’s customer service would have meant spending $50 in the middle of the night, because their offices were always closed at the times when I could use Skype at an internet cafe. Finally, I was able to get AT&T to reprogram my phone to get text messages through a local carrier.
Internet calling services like Skype have taken over all international calls in Nepal, since they are basically free vs. $4 per minute for conventional telephones. The only problem is that internet service is often so bad that Skype is unusable – and unavailable several hours per day when the power goes off.
So despite our fancy tools, we are back in the 1950′s here, when a local call was a challenge and an international call unheard-of. It’s kind of nice, but also a reminder of how dependent we have become on instant communications.