“I have a terrible headache!” admitted Dhonam, climbing down after a 2-hour stint in the    mid-day sun near Pong lake. We were all dehydrated and discouraged. We have been trying to bring up the carefully-planned and so far meticulously executed link for the best part of the day with little success. It was time to rethink our approach

12 hours and 3 bottles of chilled wine later, braving monsoon rains and post-monsoon heat in the plains, our team was finally able to declare success in bringing up the link between our NOC in Dharamsala and a local school in the village of Khatiar, 45 bumpy kilometers and 1,000 meters away and below, at the banks of Pong lake. The link was built at the request of supporters of the local middle school at the village of Khatiar, who purchased a number of computers for the use of students and staff at the school.

Pong lake - view from Khatiar school

Dhonam, Nick and Gompo preparing the Basunti link

Basunti School - pre Internet days (keep up the volleyball guys!) 

 The 5.8 GHz link is made of two dedicated nodes – the first, a solar-powered mini-tower is located on a mountain top above our NOC. Using Mikrotik routers, Ubiquiti radios and a locally-manufactured 32dB full-dish antenna, it connects to a similar router and antenna setup (mains powered with battery backup) in the school, from where connectivity is distributed to the school itself and an office premise 3 km. away.

 Basunti link - Dharamsala side relay

 The first stages of the installation – configuration of routers and placement of the equipment on the tours, went rather smoothly despite the intense heat on the Basunti side and the equally intense rain on the TCV side.Aiming, however, proved to be a challenge. Despite careful planning and intensive pre-testing of all the equipment, connectivity proved elusive on the first day. As sometime happens, a fresh start the next morning, with two teams present at both ends (one with umbrellas against the torrential rains and the others again frying in the heat), provided us with a satisfactory -75 dB link.

 Dhonam checking the link quality

 A few hours later, checks established that a stable 5mbps link is in operation. A further few hours and one power cut later, the computers at the school and at the Basunti office joined the AirJaldi family.
Dhonam has gotten over his headache and lost a few kilograms since the installation, Gompo has reformatted his computer three times, Nick is back in Canada.
And the link? The link has been up and running for over three weeks now.
We shall return soon to catch the beautiful migrating birds on the lake. We don’t expect we’ll need to leave the classroom or the lake banks to fix anything.