Anticipating India

---

Wendy and Barbara Prepare for a Nine Week Tour of India

The guidebooks were bought February 2005. Lonely Planet cost $38.95CAD plus tax. The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide had a similar price tag but was aquired at a 20% discount. LP is beginning to fall apart from overuse. It has good information all round. DK Eyewitness books are my favourite on any topic and I do love good pictures. For maps of walking tours and enticing illustrations, this guide definitely whets ones appitite.

The Grand Adventure begins.

My Women's Institute aquaintance, Wendy, whose husband is not a traveller, instantly agreed when I suggested she come with me to India. It has been one of her lifetime dreams. Weekly dinners and shopping trips began and we came to know each other better.

Nine months later: we have given birth to a comfortable friendship and are prepared to embark on our nine week adventure.

The tickets were bought in May; inauculations have been endured at the local Health Unit; passports are renewed and the last of seven itineraries has been drafted. Are the $88CAD malaria pills really necessary? Its winter in India! surely the mosquiotes know that too!

Our main goals are to travel by train, eat food from all the regions we visit and check out textiles and architecture. From an attempt to cover the entire sub-continent in nine weeks, we have now narrowed down our destinations to the following 15: Delhi, Amritsar, Dharamsala, Shimla, Sarahan, Agra, Varanasi, Patna, Darjeeling, Kolkata, the Sunderbans, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Panjim in Goa, and Mumbai.


A new backpack and luggage has been bought. Secret belts and pouches have been stuffed with American Express cheques. Shoes and sandles have been broken in. Houses have been put into some kind of order. And everyone knows we are on our way!!

We leave for India via Dubai December 27 and return February 27. The nine week trip with air fare, rail pass, food and hotel will come to $3,600 CAD each. This is surely not the final tally .....

The aquisition of the 6 month visa is the first drama.

It can be done by mail. For some, the form is online. Tried to download the Toronto form since that is the city that serves our district. No luck. Continuously received the Ottawa form.
The only solution was to go to the office while passing thru Toronto on the way to Montreal. Went on a cold Monday morning.
Arrived at 10:15.
After finding on-street-parking at Yonge and Davisville (which was a feat in itself) my little friend, who was with me because we were going to go to the Science Centre after the visa to see BodyWorld2, and I went upstairs to the Indian High Commission Office on the fourth flour.

What a shock!

The space was full! It looked like 500 people; filling all the chairs and all the available standing space. The web site had declared that if one arrived between 9:30 and 12:00 with cash and all the pertinent papers the visa could be aquired by 4:30 the same day.

WRONG ... VERY WRONG!!!

Because I had the eight year old with me, we only picked up the application form and left for the Science Centre. I was remiss in sending the form to Wendy in better time ...mia culpa!

After Montreal I resolved to be at the High Commission entrance by 6:30. Of course, the alarm failed to wake me, so my good friend braved early morning traffic and dropped me at the entrance. I was number 42!!!! in line. It was 6:45 in the morning!! Surprise?... huge understatement!

Now the information gathering began. From one, two, three men morsels of info enlightened me about the intricacies of getting an Indian visa all on the same day.

1. Only 350 visas are processed by 4:30 in the afternoon. One must be in this group to qualify for a same day visa.

2. Many people come for more than one visa (family members or hired gofers). Each visa requires one number so already the number of individuals getting a visa today has diminished.

3. The line-up forms in the foyer of the building. At 7:30 we are allowed to go up in the elevator to the 4th floor. Now the growing group of anxious travellers has to wait in a narrow hall till 8:30. A hot hour later, the door to the waiting area opens. Remember to get one number for each visa required! The waiting in the chairs begins and will end at 9:30 when 3 of the five wickets will open to begin the processing of visas.

4. Ones number is called; passport, application and cash ($62CAD) are presented and one receives a receipt for all.

5. Returning at 3:30 in the afternoon for the 4:30 pick- up one is more than startled to see a long, long twisting queue waiting for two of the five wickets to open for the visa pick-up. An elderly gentlemen reassures everyone that in India the queues are also very orderly.

6. If one cannot aquire one of the 350 numbers, passport, application and other pertinent papers can be left with a clerk. It must be accompanied with a money order, not cash. Everyone's documents are piled on top of one another without benefit of paperclip, stable, elastic or envelope. That sight is very, very scary!

All in all the day went well and the visa was successfully aquired. Only one warning about naughty behavior was made. There were many disappointed people; people who had not yet had the benefit of a second visit, when everything becomes as clear as mud ... not due to the website! but from shared info given by friendly, helpful fellow travellers embarking on a new adventure, a home visit, a relative's wedding or after many years, a return to ones birhtplace.

The experience at the Indian High Commission was a practice in patience, understandiong and tolerance; all of which will stand us in good stead for whatever we meet during our adventure.

We know where we are going;
we know how we will get there;
we know what we want to see.
What we encounter, will be a total surprise.

---