ABSTRACT
The last 15 years have witnessed the rapid and accelerating penetration of the entire Himalayan region by modern technology, including television, electronic mail, and the Internet. This has been reinforced by the equally rapid expansion of surface and air communications and almost unrestricted access by trekkers and tourists. Many previously isolated villages with little knowledge of day-to-day events in the outside world have acquired instant access to happenings in London, Washington, Tokyo, and Beijing, as well as in their own capital cities. Furthermore, an increasing number of mountain dwellers are travelling abroad in search of wage employment or higher education. Many return home, adding to the flood of new ideas and knowledge and bringing money with them. Others join growing ethnic communities in the industrialized countries and send home remittances and opinions and initiate a twoway exchange. In parts of the region, terrorism and warfare have produced an influx of foreign military personnel and journalists that has opened the door to the outside world still further. The result has been the generation of change on an unprecedented scale; it overwhelms the earlier inroads made by foreign aid and tourism that began to expand during the third quarter of the twentieth century.
