Preparations...


Just misspent the whole day obtaining (hopefully) Indian e-Visas. Started at 10 am, finished 6 hours later at 4pm. You couldn't make it up, and the Indians certainly couldn't program it. Time after time the applications were lost, retrieved, lost again and failed to retrieve. Oh dear, back to the start for the umpteenth time. Each time they were retrieved various bits of data surreptitiously reverted to their default settings. Difficult to spot amidst multi page forms requiring all sorts of family history, recent mug shots in jpg format and the photopage of your passport in pdf format. Really, why on earth require a photopage in pdf, especially one which has a special anti-photographic security seal over it.

Just when we thought we were done, the site refused to accept payment for Christine's application and despite repeated requests to pay, just refused to work. The only way round it was to open yet another application and go through the whole wretched time-wasting procedure again, thankfully resulting in an accepted payment the second time.

And then after all the hassle and a non-refundable $60 lighter per person all you get is an email saying they may email you a visa in 72 hours time for you to print out. Well, I hope they do because that will be perilously close to departure time.

I wish the Indians would copy the Sri Lankans, compared to this fiasco getting a Sri Lankan electronic travel authority was a breeze!