Mobile phones, internet and WiFi connectivity

Trekking is a wonderful break from the wireless world, but in the towns and cities out here it is now your choice whether you disconnect or stay connected.

Check your mobile phone roaming services prior to leaving to know whether you might have service.

Nepal - Kathmandu

Most overseas roaming-enabled mobile phones work in Kathmandu and Pokhara. When you arrive in the country you have choice of logging on to "49 01" and "49 02" or something similar, using "49 02"/Ncell will give you faster service in Kathmandu.

You should be aware that occasionally an SMS (text) message sent to you will arrive 20 times. You can send messages out, normally without problem. Blackberry services, GPRS , EDGE and 3G etc are now available.

Local SIM cards can be bought from corner shops, and start at around $8 (cheap!), and refills by scratch cards, very easy and convenient. You need an UNLOCKED phone to use a local SIM.

Internet cafés litter Thamel and other tourist haunts, so checking your Yahoo, Gmail etc. is easy and cheap. For laptop users there are more and more free WiFi cafés.

India - Delhi, Manali

Your phone and SMS message services should work over most of India, but not necessarily in Leh.

There are Internet cafés everywhere, and the prices are very reasonable and often the connections are surprisingly fast. A few places have Skype headsets. You need a photocopy of your passport each time. Sometimes you can hook up a laptop but it is often more hassle than it should be.

India - Leh

Leh is really still remote and so don't rely on having any sort of reliable connectivity up there, treat it as a bonus. There are long load-shedding power cuts too.

The mobile phone coverage only covers the main part of the city, and is overloaded in the summer although it is being expanded. There are internet cafes but these suffer frequent short outages.

Tibet - Lhasa

Most overseas mobile phones work in Lhasa, indeed along the entire road and even at Everest Base Camp!

Other sorts of connectivity is far more problematic, and internet cafe computers are usually in Chinese, have computer viruses and are sometimes hard to find. You will occasionally be able to check Yahoo, etc, but some other websites are blocked by Chinese censors, and the connections very slow.