As everyone knows, the foothills of the Great Himalayas are full of greens and mountain villages dotting the steep valleys

�i‚P�j�@Kathmandu is located in the central highland of Nepal, but as one goes north, one faces a wave after wave of deep valleys and green foothills with small villages nestling on the steep sides of the mountains.

During and after the second half of the 20th century, the beautiful nature and rich cultural tradition of Nepal became widely known not only by the Western visitors but also by the growing number of wealthy fellow Asian. However, from afterthe tragic incident in New York on September 11, 2001, the international tourism has suffered a marked decline seriously impacting Nepal.
The obvious decline of tourism business has stagnated the economy of Kathmandu giving rise to a widespread sene of uncertainty, while its impact is also felt in the rural communities of the country.

These children are from the Kot-timar village in the Kavre District northeast of Mathmandu. In the background is part of the village school buildings where the Thangka Painting School holds classes.

Our present plan is to install a ground station of our satellite communications system connecting the village with the Internet world. By doing so, it will be possible to bring these children into direct and interactive contact with their counterparts living in the urban communities of the Asia-Pacific region including Japan and the United States.
Talk about the lack of social infrastructures. This vilage of Kot-timar has no gas, no water system, no electricity, no direct road access by motor vehilces and no glass windows. You look for what you normally expect to see in your own hometown, and the chances are you don't find them here.
The Nepali communities we want to bring into direct contact with the outside world is not necessarily those urban centers like Kathmandu where the rich families do enjoy comparable, if not better, everyday ammenities, but rather these rural villages where most Nepali children and youth continue to live a life of extreme simplicity without destroying their beautiful natural environment.

I met this kid in the middle of nowhere as I was trekking a steep uphill mountain path. He smiled and walked with me for half an hour and disappeared as suddenly as he had jumped out of the woods.

It is true that this can be said much more easily than done in a rural setting like this to set it up and keep it running as it should. Considerable training of the personnel and the organization of the exchange program itself must first be completed.
Our starting point, however, has already been built within the village in the form of the Thangka Painting School which the Virtual Foundation Japan has helped since 1997, where there are thirty to fourty students are enrolled studying hwo to do Nepal's traditional Buddhist art painting under the guidance of a highly qualifed instructor. If we can connect these students with their ounterparts in the outsid world, it will certainly give them a wonderful opportunity to introduce and talk about Nepal's cultural heritage and how it relates to their everyday life.

As we bid goodbye to the child from the woods, we came to the crest of the steep hill. And, low and behold, we were able to see the entire village of Kot-timar spreading below on the other side of the valley. One comes to the realization that modern social infrastructures no longer make any sense in such a virgin natural setting. We were there at long last!

As to the technology of connecting the village with the world of Internet via satellite, we had already conducted a series of field tests to ascertain the feasibility of bringing such rural communities into direct Internet contact with their urban cousins at a very inexpensive cost. In addition, we had already developed a multilingual translation service system, which will enable every participant to use his/her own tounge without language barriers. And, after entering a strategic alliance agreement with the Himalaya Light Foundation in 2001, the only job left undone is the installation of the ground station system in the Kot-timar village and assign the trained personnel to do the job.

We stayed in the guest room of the village school, and every morning these children would come knocking on the door to wake us up. Some of them were bare-footed even in the falling rain, but their bright and inquisitive eyes have long remained in our memory.

Mr. Adam Friedensohn who is the founder of the Himalaya Light Foundation is a unique local NGO in Nepal was born in the northeastern region of the United States, and became a Buddhist in his late teens. He soon found himself in Nepal, learned how to speak Nepali and Tibetan languages, having deeply involved himself in the local NGO activities in support of the self-help development of rural communities. Most notably, the HLF has placed a major emphasis on a rural electrification program under which solar pannels are loaned out to rural families so that women can gainfully work in the evening hours making traditional arts and crafts items for sale. The only shortcoming of this wonderful empowerment program was the lack of reliable market for the products.

The encounter with the HLF was a wonderful occasion for us. Ww had spent quite some time developing an Internet site aimed at international cultural exchange for the children and youth of the Asia-Pacific region. And as such, we found ourselves in a position to help the HLF build the badly needed market digitally on the Internet as an integral part of the cultural exchange activities. Thus, we are in the process of building what we would like to call "The E-Bazaar" which will provide a stage for the young aspiring artists and craftpeople to come in direct contact with their counterparts in other Asia-Pacific countries including Japan and the United States.

�i‚Q�j Thus, the village of Kot-timar became the target site for our test project for involving remote rural communities in our Cultural Exchange Program

The gaping dark openings are the open windows without glass panes and without room lighting. But, the children were full of energy enjoying their free afternoon hours.

The main hardware needed for the satellite hookup consists of a modest solar or wind mill power generation unit, a portable ground station with a special antenna which will connect up with the satellites for for uploading and downloading of messages, and a personal computer, preferably a laptop, hooked onto the ground station.
Once we have all these units, as you can see in the picture  below, a class like this can be hooked up with other classrooms in Japan, the United States, or  anywhere else in the world, seven days a week and at least a few times a day.

 The actual e-mail communication is almost nearly as simple and easy as it is in a fully equipped urban environment in major cities, and training inly requires someone who can handle e-mail communication under normal setting. His only need to to get to learn how to use the ground station's functions, such as correcting the position of the ground station as it is moved from one location to another with the help of the built-in GPS.

This is to say that one can move the ground station from place to place as need arises, i.e., from an elementary school to a middle school, without any complicated technical adjustments.
Once this system in in place, one can communicate, at a cost much less than the traditional long-distance phone calls, with the entire outside world not only the urban centers but also other remote communities including the Mongolians who lead normadic life moving from place to place as long as they have the same ground station systems. The only limitation will be that one is required to refrain from handling large information units typically high-resolution images because it will take up too much of the satellite capacity at the expense of the users from other remote communities. We are aiming at creating an extensive network within the Asia-Pacific region so that every participants have a fair chance to participate in the cultural exchange activities.
If the people of the Kot-timar village want to see everything with all the pictures and images, someone in Kathmandu can download the needed information into a CD and send it to the village for local viewing.

This model has some salient features which its precessors did not possess such as the built-in GPS position adjustment, the battery's much longer life, and the improved reliability of the communication protocol.

The lefthand photo shows the latest model, Stasia 96, ground station. In itself, the size is scarecely larger than the table telephone right next to it. If the lid locked tight, the sysem becomes weather-proof, and therefore, stands the condition of outdoor transport in rough country. You only have to plug this into your power source and hook it up to the antenna, it will be ready for your laptop computer. It will go with you anywhere you want because of the automatic function of the built-in GPS, and will continue to upload and download messages at every pass of the satellites.
Your mail address will be only slightly different from the regular Inernet mail address because of the prefix which stands for the satellite exchange of the messages with the Internet system. So long as you keep your messages in the text form, the outgoing messages can be almost as long as you want.

This antenna is the 2002 model with full air-tight enclosure capable to withstand all types of climatic conditions. This design was developed in order to eliminate problems it encounteres in the humid monsoon season of East Asia.

Look at the size of the solar panel placed on top of the roof of the school building. It shows how modest the power consumption of this communication system will actually be.

This protable solar power kit has two panels which can be folded and packed into a small flat suitcase for east transport as long as there is a small 4-wheel vehicle.

Test scene in Japan. _During the summer and the fall of 2001, most of the basic tests were completed, leaving only the actual field test in Nepal using the latest model Stasia 906.

The OS of the laotop PC recommended for field use in the remote rural communities is Windows95, or Windows98 because you will have more problems with the newer OS due to the lack of both operating knowledge and repair parts.