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Communication

In most of India, the Internet is widely accessible. There are hundreds of Internet cafés in Delhi and dozens in Leh. However, there is no Internet access along the trekking routes and you can’t even rely on connecting to the net in Padum. Fees are generally low (Rs15–90 per hour), but in Leh they are much higher than elsewhere. Downloading photos from a camera or a memory card, and burning DVDs, is possible in almost every café, but watch out for computer viruses – it is quite common to lose the data from a card! Choose computers with anti-virus software installed. If you lose important data, stop using the card and try to restore the data using disk-recovery software when you get home. Skype is available in most cafés, but some of them charge extra for voice conversations.

A young monk at Thikse Gompa, near Leh

Foreign SIM cards generally work in Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh but some do not enable you to make calls (you can receive calls and send/receive SMS messages). In the State of Jammu and Kashmir not only are foreign cards not accepted by the system, but neither do prepaid cards from all other Indian states work. To use your mobile phone in Ladakh you either need a contract phone from another Indian state (certainly not all of them will work) or a SIM card from one of the J&K state networks. The latter is not easy to arrange, even for a prepaid card.