Diary of an Internet Addict

While I tried to do live blogging as I usual have for all my trips, I found that outside Delhi, especially the Jammu & Kashmir region, it was near impossible to do so. As such, I am taking this opportunity to gather my thoughts and write proper but hopefully interesting blog posts.

Connectivity

For the India trip, I used the unlimited data $15/18 per day postpaid line. While it sort of works in Delhi, it was completely useless in Jammu & Kashmir region. Due to security reasons, only postpaid Indian lines are allowed. If your postpaid line can connect to BNSL or Airtel, hooray for you. (I did not try to see whether non-Indian prepaid cards work there).

Another thing about connectivity – while the guesthouses have internet, and there’s internet cafe and all, the actual connectivity in the Kashmir region is based on the Sri Nagar offices. In our time there, half the time, we could not get any network at all while the half we had really excellent network (at least for whatsapping and facebook messenger).

Flying to Leh

There are no direct flights to Leh from Singapore. In our case, we transited via Delhi, spending the night there, before taking the morning flight to Leh.

Another note here: Flights to Leh are only in the morning and up to a certain timing (still in the morning).

Security at India airport

They will pat you. Everywhere. If you’re lucky, they won’t make you take off your shoes. Also, the moment we touched down, we saw some people arguing and more people taking videos of them arguing. We think that it might have something to do with e-visa. So best to just stick to normal paper visa. Also, when we were flying off, a couple of our traveling companions were asked mundane questions.

Water

Although I was advised against taking cold water in India, I had some cold drinks and my stomach was fine. On the contrary, when I ate some instant noodles(from Singapore), I immediately had diarrhea. Odd.

That said, if you want to be safe, stick to bottled water.