Visa for India

In order to travel to India next week, I needed to get a visa from the Indian Government. Unfortunately, I can't be without my passport for the two/three weeks it takes to process the application, so the only option was to go to India House in London and stand in line for a "same-day" service. Boy oh boy, was I in for some fun!

On Monday morning, I left home at 5am to ensure I was at the front of the line so that I could get back to work as quickly as possible. Usually, a 5am get-up wouldn't be uncommon due to the distance between my home and the office, but it was especially painful on this morning because I had returned from Australia the day before. Add to this the driving, freezing rain and bitter wind for the 90 minutes waiting in the queue outside the embassy, and you can imagine how I felt when a rather worried looking official from the embassy put a sign in the window at 8am that said "due to power cut, no visa today - come back tomorrow". The words "oh dear, never mind" are something like the printable version of what I, and the other 1000+ people behind me, said! Wet to the skin and very cold, I turned around and traveled the two hours back to the office with the prospect of going through this again the following day.

At 5am, I left home again on Tuesday to repeat the process. This time, the embassy did open at 8:30am and, after standing in line for three hours outside, I got a little yellow ticket that entitled me to join another queue inside the building. What a result! An hour later, I handed in my documents and was told to come back in a hour. I instinctively snorted a laugh when the lady assured me that it would be ready -- judging by the way she threw my application form to the bottom of a rather large processing bucket demonstrated that a sense of humour is optional in all government agencies, regardless of the nation.

On my way out of the embassy at 10am to wait for my visa to be processed, I decided to count the number of people in the line waiting to get into the building. I counted nearly 3000 people, the vast majority of whom had no chance of even getting a little yellow ticket to queue inside!

So, you guessed it, four hours later I finally got my passport back. The collection point was inside the same hall that I had been six hour before, except this time it resembled one of those competitions to see how many people you can fit inside a mini. Wembley stadium could not hold as many people as had crammed into that little processing hall. When I finally heard my number come up to collect my passport, the only way to get it was to pass my ticket to the person in front of me in the maelstrom, who duly passed it along to others in front, who finally got it into the hands of the lady behind the bullet-proof screen. There then ensued a frightening exchange of passports as the wrong ones got passed back to people by the crowd in front!

It's now Thursday and I have just regained the feeling in my frozen toes and my inner-calm has been restored. The big question is this; is the embassy specially designed to give prospective visitors a little taster of the fun that is in store upon arrival? I'll see next week.