This section covers some of the technology and equipment we used to produce "India on 2 Wheels" while on the road. The artwork and site itself are created on a Macintosh 3400, with 144MB RAM, a 4 gig hard drive, and a 200mhz processor. It's not the fastest machine, but it's adequate and durable. We had a swappable 100MB zip drive for back-up, a 3.5" floppy drive, and a CD drive. To capture images, we used a Kodak DC5000 digital camera which takes decent photos and comes in a bulletproof body. The camera used a compact flash card to store images which can be removed from the camera and put into the PC card slot in the Mac with the help of an adapter. The card then showed up on the Mac desktop as a hard drive. The Sharp 821 Minidisc recorder we were using for sound was stolen on the train from Jodhpur to Calcutta, but was replaced by a brand new Sony MZ-R900 Minidisc player.

Indian current is 220v, so you will need an adapter if any of your equipment is 110v. As far as plugs are concerned, most here are the 5 pin variety, in which a 2 pin European plug will fit. Plug adapters are widely available in electronic shops. The Indian power supply can be a bit sketchy, as the power usually goes out about 5 times a week for 15 minutes to 4 hours. A lot of buildings have their own generators, but not all.

Getting access to a server with your own machine can be a bit of a hassle in India, but cyber cafes are widespread. We use the services of FortuneCity to store and upload our site. We save our web pages on a floppy in the Mac, bring the floppy to a cyber cafe, and upload our pages from the cafe's machine using an FTP (file transfer protocol) program. We had some trouble finding cyber cafes that have an FTP program installed on their machines, so we would recommend you bring a CD with an FTP program on it and install it on their machines. You can also download free FTP programs over the internet, but transfer rates are still pretty slow in parts of India. For the most part, the cafe owners will let you install the software, just let them know before hand.

The Macintosh performed nobly and survived the relentless roads of India relatively unharmed. Finding Mac support in India is virtually impossible. We spent an entire day in New Delhi searching for a Mac mouse to no avail. You may have better luck finding Mac related accessories in Mumbai or Banglore. Windows based machines are widespread in India and finding support for them in the larger cities should be no problem.

Would we do it again? I'm not sure I would lug all this equipment around again for free. If it was for some scratch, maybe. Having the bikes definitely made it easier to carry more stuff. If I was traveling by public transport, there would be no way I would carry all that! An alternative to bringing your own equipment is just posting text updates and not including any photos. There are numerous servers out there that will allow you to do this for free, such as Homestead, Blogger, or Angelfire.