India part 1: The Visa

I got my Lonely Planet book of India for Christmas and have been looking at planning my holidays as they were due to be before I started teaching. Obviously as India is very big, I couldn't go too far south so had a look around the east and north of Delhi. I was a bit dismayed to find out that once I get to the north and in the mountains, even though there seem to be some interesting places to visit, the journey times are insane. It would take about 14 hours to travel 100km! I don't think it would take much longer to walk that distance...

But first of all, I needed to have my visa, of course.

I applied for it in the first week of December and it took them till after I came back from Porto until they told me they needed my passport, not just a photocopy of it and some normal photos, not printed out ones. So I had to go to the office on the 20^th. This was after I spent $9.95 getting two portrait photos from Jessops (go somewhere else if you have to get these). I handed all my stuff in and the woman said it should be back to me by the Friday or next Tuesday. I thought that was fine.

I waited and by the following Thursday, still nothing had arrived. I had to phone them even though it costs 95p a minute... They said I needed to submit my passport and photos... No, that was before went to the office. I've been there, now... Basically, they had done nothing with my stuff and if I hadn't contacted them, they wouldn't do anything at all...

I told them I was due to fly the next Tuesday and at the moment, due to their utter incompetence, this was looking very unlikely. I asked if it would be delivered before then, he said it might be. That doesn't help, does it? So I told him to mark it as urgent and to notify me whenever they had some information about the process.

I got an email on Friday saying they needed my references. I'd told him about that on the phone already but hey, it's fun talking to the dead sometimes...

So I emailed that information and am now waiting for it to arrive. It's not going to be here before I had to go so the only thing I could do was change my flight. Luckily, that was easy enough but it cost another £90. I have set it to Sunday the 8^th, five days later and it had better get here in the next week.

Of course, I'm not happy about any of this and if you need to apply for an Indian visa, do it as early as you can depending on your latest date for leaving India. The office workers are dreadful and you will need to keep asking them, even if it is only one or two days later than you were told. Otherwise, you may never get it. So, just to mention the institution by name for search engine results – Indian Visa Application Centre, UK – a very poor service.

I'll have to rethink where I am going to travel to now, with only five days available to me instead of ten.