Email in Benares

[zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl]

Replies to msg 18 Apr 96: indology at liverpool.ac.uk
(biernack at ccat.sas.upenn.edu)

 bsue> I'm wondering if anyone has specific information about
 bsue> acquiring access
 bsue> to email in Benares.  Thanks in advance,

If you can show that you are a 'bona fide' scholar at an American academic
institution, you may be able to persuade the administrator at an institution in
Benares (BHU, perhaps) to grant you temporary access. I've heard that some
people have been able to make such arrangements for themselves in Bangalore;
but whether this also goes in the North, I can't say.

The cheapest commercial way to have email is through VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam
Ltd.), which has servers in Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, Bangalore and Madras. But
I understand they demand payment for a year in advance, and you must reckon
with the extremely noisy telephone lines in India when making long distance
logins.

An American colleague in Mysore finally gave up searching for local
possibilities and logged in to his American email account twice a week. The
phone link Mysore-USA is via satellite, and it worked reasonably well.

Robert Zydenbos