On our way to India

Traveling to India? You will need a visa and be prepared for lots of further paperwork and red tape.  You are best to start early on the process.

A report by Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy ranks bureaucracies across Asia on a scale from one to 10, with 10 being the worst.  India scored 9.21. Things take time, they love to stamp forms in triplicate, and you must follow the instructions to the letter or you will have to start over. Prophetically, when you google "India visa" and then click on the online application site your browser will warn you that the connection is untrusted and recommends that you choose "get me out of here" instead of continuing on.

Ah, but you must fill out the application online, you cannot print out the form and fill it in;  you must fill it out online, but then you still have to print it out, mail it or take it in. So you must click through and pray you don't get an Indian computer virus.

And the application is long and arduous - you are given a temporary ID while you are filling it out, but you must finish filling in the form within 7 days or you have to start all over again. You must state the countries you've traveled to in the last 10 years; your religion (what if you don't have one?) you must have 2 references, including someone in India. Not only do you need a 2x2 passport photo, you must scan that photo and insert it into the online form! You must select the correct "Indian Mission Office" to process your application - more on that later. Once you are done, you must print the application in PDF form, being assured that the barcodes on the form print legibly and that your photo is perfectly aligned in the proper box. In passive-aggressive fashion, one of those barcodes is at the very bottom of the form so your printer better be top notch!

Now I am very computer literate. I do everything online. I have a scanner. I have a blog and sometimes even have to dabble in html.  This should not be hard for me!

After pondering the forms and questions I sought the help of CIBT who would process the visa for me. They helpfully emailed me a packet, one specifically geared for Regent cruisers, who qualify for a negotiated discount on CIBTs fees. They provided helpful tips as how to answer some of the questions. And they provided a preprinted label for me to FedEx my forms to their office. My form had the address of CIBT in Chicago. So I filled the forms out, scanned the photos and then attempted to print them out on my printer. Alas, my alignment must be off and the bottom bar code didn't print... so I found a neighbor with a better printer. Sealed up the packet, drove into town and Fedex'd it off to CIBT in Chicago as instructed.

A day or two later I received a call from CIBT - since I live in New Mexico the San Francisco office must process my application. They would Fedex my passport etc. to them (at my cost), BUT, I will have to redo the online visa application forms since the Indian Mission Office must match and their form is slightly different. The only difference that I could tell was a slight change in the logo on top of the form, but I still had to re-do it, re-scan my photo, go visit my neighbor's printer and then Fedex everything overnight out to California.

During this whole process it occurred to me that I never want to do this again and may very well go back to India some day, so I applied for the longest visa I could get - 10 years - strangely priced exactly the same as the 5 year visa.

On to India!

On our bed a few days ago in preparation for our arrival were no less than 6 Indian forms requiring our signatures and a speedy return to Reception. Those of us who toiled long and hard over our Indian visas had reason to assume that the worst was over, but we will now all have to appear for a face to face with immigration officials on our arrival in Cochin, then each time we proceed ashore (5 times...) we must take a shore pass leave card and a photocopy of our passport with us. And then we have to have yet another face to face when we arrive in Mumbai and repeat the shore pass thing there too, finally relinquishing that to the port agent when we disembark. How the Indians love their forms and bureaucracy!