Incredible India: Without Internet Access, Koenig Inn is a Prison

My connection was down

When in a distant land, well away from friends and family there is one bond that we take for granted because we have taken it in trust and it factored into all the decisions we made to leave the comfort of our home for the adventure which might well be the one of a lifetime.

Away from those I know, I am four and a half or 5 and a half hours ahead of their own daily timeframe, it means ones bears it in thought that one will not call to speak in the morning because they will be asleep, neither can one during the day because the overlapping times of work mean the pleasantries of interaction are reduced to more business-like conversation.

The window of opportunity between my getting to bed and they having the time to chat is reasonably around 8:00PM their time which is just after midnight here or an hour later.

In terms of cost, we have found that Skype suits us best and that needs the Internet as the carrier, its availability is critically paramount.

A prison of life

The lonely world that is framed within the confines of the little room that is a prison of convenience for a month is opened up into a vast and limitless place through the Internet which serves as the beast of burden for email, social interaction, news retrieval and again a critical research resource that underpins the reason why we have left our homes for this place.

Whatever discomforts, nostalgia, loneliness or isolation is somewhat ameliorated with the feeling that one can through this invisible but tangible medium, touch the world and be in touch – at will and without let or hindrance.

However, this night will count as one of the least comfortable I have had in a long time, the darkness settled in figurative and literal sense at the doors to the world were closed like one were in a maximum security prison.

Freedoms lost

The guards knowing we should be free could not open the prison gates and we were completely constrained, our freedom lost and the silence of the night stilled to the hearing of sounds from outer space if ones ears were so attuned.

From about 9:45PM when I noticed, the wireless connectivity between my netbook and the wireless access point was fine but the wireless access point could not take me beyond itself into the world of the Internet – it was down.

An idea for partnership

The staff could not resolve the problem and there I was, cut off and thinking fast about what other alternatives were available at the loss of this service – none easily came to mind apart from one good idea – the need for a contingency plan which should come at no additional cost.

There are many hotels that are in the vicinity of my hotel, all broadcast the presence of their wireless access points, where the service in one hotel fails, there should be an arrangement between hotels to allow for guests in other hotels to hop on their systems whilst steps are taken to expedite repairs of the service we used to have.

A rotten moment

This must be the lowest point in terms of my sense of comfort; the absence of Internet access, the last resort is to switch the SIM card in my phone back to my home SIM card and roam – not the best but this situation must definitely not happen again, it just must not, again.

No, sooner had I changed my SIM card and began to roam, my 10MB of data was used up without having done much.