Monday, August 31

Indian High Commission in NZ much friendlier than the one in London

Instead of hanging up on Graham, 'Raj' chatted with him for about ten minutes and assured him the visa could be processed within an hour.

The passport was sent off on Saturday morning so now we're just waiting for the post to do their bit. Fingers crossed our trip might only be delayed by 5-7 days! Big thanks to Peter for handling things in Wellington!

In the meantime the packing continues and the lounge looks like a tornado blew in.

Friday, August 28

Trip home gets off to dicey start as Graham's Indian tourist visa is refused

Right - so it turns out that in order to get a tousrist visa for India from the UK not only does your passport need to be valid for at least another six months but (and this is not stated anywhere on their website) your UK visa/leave-to-remain must also not expire less than 6 months before your visa application date.

Graham's UK visa expires in November this year....bugger.

So we've been told the only other way for him to get his visa is to send his passport to the Indian High Comission in Wellington where it will take ten working days to process.

But we want to leave the UK in seven days from now!

We've had some ideas of how we can tackle this, but it's fair to say that our first encounter with Indian bureau-crazy has not gone too well ; )

All I can say is India better be worth the trouble!!!

Tuesday, August 25

Eleven more sleeps!

Paranoia is starting to set in as we realise how much there still is to do, and how little time there is before we leave London. The fact that our internet at home isn't working currently is not helping. Thankfully we have sorted an appointment to get our India visas this Friday, fingers crossed the queue at the visa centre won't be too long. Currently in the process of scanning backups of all our important travel documents. Some of the boxes are packed but there's still a few to go. Good thing there is a long weekend coming up : )

If you're wondering why you got this - I've added a few of you to get automatic emails whenever our blog is updated, I'm thinking this might save a bit of time at internet cafe's on the way.

Love from London,

F & G