Online on the road in India

I finally got Internet access via Airtel GPRS Mobile Office so maybe I’ll fill in some of the gaps where we’ve been. I want to get a little google map happening showing where we’ve been but the WordPress travelog plugin isn’t doing it for me and the guy that wrote travelog is currently travelling round India himself and not doing any work on it for a while.

Airtel Mobile Office is pretty cheap and convenient once you get it sorted. Unfortunately, not many Airtel staff seem to know much about it. I got passed round on the phone and went to three Airtel shops before I finally got it sorted. You need an Airtel SIM with some credit and a GPRS recharge card (250 rupees per month). There’s no data charges so you’re looking at a month of all you can eat internet for 600 rupees all up. I had to enter extra modem initialisation commands too. Best bet is ringing the AirTel helpline and asking for a technical support person with knowledge of Mobile Office to ring you back.

We’re in Ooty, aka Udagamandalam or Ootacamund, up at 2250m in the Nilgiri hills. We’ve splashed out on a hotel overlooking the lake with a great veg restaurant and a porter who is happy to catch the bus in to town to fetch us beer so we’re quite happy not moving too far at the moment.

Ooty was established as a retreat for the colonial Brits. I found it quite strange to come across a town of this size way up in the Niligiri hills, very Shangri-la. Apparently Ooty used to look like a cross between an English village and an Australian country town but a lot of that has been lost with all the concrete blocks that have sprung up. Vegetables grow well up here and the bazaar is full of goodies. I’m not too keen on hanging round the chicken stalls though. I saw a crazy article in the newspaper yesterday about some guy drinking chicken’s blood for some festival. The picture showed him with the chicken’s neck in his mouth, feathers and all. I hope he didn’t actually kill it by biting it cos that would be really wrong. Bird flu should do well with those guys.