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Posted
on 04-Nov-03 02:28 PM
The six internet cafes in this thriving market town and tourist centre may not be the world's highest connections to the world wide web, but they are definitely the busiest in the Himalayas.
It's just after 6pm, already dark, and the thin air at 3,450 metres is getting decidedly frosty.
Wolfgang Urtz from Vienna comes into the Namche Cyber Cafe to send e-mails to friends at home.
"I've been travelling for six months," he says, justifying the charges of nearly 30 US cents a minute. "My family are worried about me."
Cafe manager Suman Lama shows him to the only vacant terminal.
Young local men - all Sherpas working in the tourist industry - and Western trekkers are in here using familiar web-based e-mail sites.
Suman's a little more sophisticated than that - he's on an MSN chat line.
When Wolfgang settles in and gets connected, Suman resumes the conversation he is having with Gopal, a Nepali living in India.
"People are really surprised in the chat rooms when I say I'm in Namche, in the shadow of Mount Everest," says Suman.
"Many don't know where it is and they ask about snow and yetis and whether Sir Edmund Hillary lives here. Westerners know more about this place than most Nepalis."
Schools project
Down the bazaar from the Namche Cyber Cafe, Tsering Gyaltsen is closing his four-terminal Internet cafe for the evening.
He has to be there early the next morning - four young boys from a village 700 metres above Namche Bazaar are coming for a class in basic computer skills.
Teaching computer literacy to children is one of the aims of Tsering's company, Linking Everest, which also provides satellite links for most of Namche's Internet cafe's.
"We've been running these classes for several months now," says Tsering.
"But what we're finding is that we need to connect with the village schools rather than expect kids to come here."
That is the impetus behind an ambitious plan to provide wireless telephone links that will connect 13 remote villages just below Mount Everest base camp to Lukla, the airport that connects the region to the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu.
With some of the world's most torturous terrain, much of it above 3,000 metres - the highest school will be about 4,000 metres up - Tsering knows he is in for a challenge.
But he exudes confidence and has experience in using technology to conquer terrain.
"We built an internet cafe at Everest Base camp this year," he says proudly.
"It was a success, although there were many times it threatened not to be. If we can do that, we can do anything."
The Everest Internet cafe was the world's highest; it operated for six weeks at 5,400 metres.
"It was a one off," says Tsering, "a trial run for all this far more important work with schools and students and helping to keep Sherpa culture intact.
"We bring the web to distant places so they can project themselves, benefit from the exposure and maybe young people will stay at home and be proud of being Sherpas, rather than running to Kathmandu or America."
Tsering also runs the Namche telephone service.
The Maoist rebels destroyed land-line connections three years ago and Tsering had to hook the town up to his satellite provider with a kind of "super switchboard" arrangement.
"It's not totally legal," he says, "but no one is rushing out here from Kathmandu to pull the plug or offer an alternative."
As night falls and the lights of Namche Bazaar go off by 10 or 11pm, tired trekkers and guides go to bed.
Some, though, head for the Namche Cyber Cafe, where the internet connection is open 24 hours.
Suman Lama is still chatting, a cup of coffee by his keyboard.
"Namche isn't on Mount Everest," I hear him explaining to someone in the chat room, "and we don't wear yak-skin coats. You should come and see for yourself sometime."
By Daniel Lak
BBC correspondent in Namche Bazaar, near Mount Everest, Nepal
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