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Like many other folks, I always take along my iPad when I am traveling, but for my three-week trip in India I have raised the stakes by not bringing along my laptop. I almost caved at the last minute when several must-do projects remained undone, but I held course and left my Lenovo in my office. Say “Hi” for me when you walk by.

Obviously, the easiest and cheapest way to use your iPad abroad is to find WiFi and access the internet through it. Unfortunately, in some countries WiFi may be less available. I can report that the Indiana Restaurant in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, has good WiFi, but when you don’t get the signal and you need to be online, cellular can work very well.

My favorite story is from Turkey a couple of years ago. Our bus driver got lost in the middle of nowhere and I opened Google Maps to help him find the correct road.

If your iPad is equipped for cellular, Verizon can give you an international cellular package for $25 that gives you 100 MB of data. It’s your job to figure out what account pays the fee. In order to access the data, you need to go to the “Settings/Cellular Data” page. Turn on “Cellular Data,” and also turn on “Data Roaming.” You should also hit the “Reset Statistics” button at the very bottom of the page. That way, you can keep track of how quickly your 100 MB gets used.

One caveat: My data package, of 100 MB, took a real hit when I watched a two-minute highlight from the Packer game and downloaded a few articles. Don’t worry, Carol, I’ll pay for the overage. There is also an inexplicable 30 megabytes expended for my calculator app. The lesson is to turn off cellular data for apps that you are not planning to use.

You can always reverse this if it turns out that you need something. Go to “Settings/Cellular Data” and turn on “Cellular Data.” Then go to the bottom of that page and you will see a list of all your apps and programs. You can individually turn off the ones that you don’t plan to use. You can only access this list when cellular data is turned on. A number of my apps work fine offline, but a harmless message pops up to inform you that CD is turned off. If it turns out that you need to turn on cellular data for an app later on, just come back to “Settings/Cellular Data” to reverse the process.

Next time on iPad on the Road, “Keeping in Touch with my Lonely Lenovo.”