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Published: September 25th 2009
Hello everyone, we are due to fly on Monday and are frantically getting ourselves sorted out.
We planned to get our visas at the start of this week but after finding out there was an Indian festival on Monday we waited until the visa application centre was open and headed over on Thursday to sort out our visas for India. From experience we knew it would be a day of long queues and boredom but we would come away with our visa at the end of it and finally feel like all of this is real! Sooo.... imagine our surprise when we got to the centre in Hayes, found an orderly waiting room and were called to our desk within 5 minutes of arriving! All the documents were put through and we were informed collection was between 2.30 and 5. "It should be back by Tuesday"..................WHAT!?!? We fly on MONDAY!!!!!!!!
Apparently the High Commission have outsourced visa applications and it takes a minimum of 2-3 working days. We're not flying until Monday night, surely they can have it ready by then. Yes, any normal week, they could have had it ready by Monday in time for our flight. BUT it is another Indian holiday on Monday so no, the High Commission is closed. We asked if there was somewhere else we could go, drive to the high commission, there must be something we can do?? ... "The High Commission says no...", realising it would cost us a small fortune to change our flights we offered them hundreds of pounds, surely we could pay to have our application fast tracked?? ... "The High Commission says no".... At this point the very nice man on the desk helpfully tells us that if we had come in yesterday this wouldn't be a problem. Thanks. Really useful.
So we call our travel agent, changing the flights is £200 each plus a fuel surcharge increase of £60 each.... over £500 to change our flights = 1 very expensive mistake. We can get on a flight in Tuesday - but should we book this when the embassy cannot guarantee the visa will be back by then? If we had to change our flights again that would be another £400 charge totalling £900 - a VERY expensive mistake!! So maybe we should rebook our flights for Wednesday..... no, there are no more flights that we can get on until 11th October if we do not fly on Tuesday.
Luckily Rich came up with a fantastic solution, we can pass through India without a visa... lets use the £500 we would have spent changing the flights to get flights to Sri Lanka from Delhi, spend a few weeks there and get the visa sorted in the embassy there. Great idea! Checked it all out with the embassy - they're happy with it. Only challenge now is to get out passports back from the embassy in Hayes..... We phoned the office only to be told that to cancel our application we must write a cover letter and wait 2-3 working days! Tearing our hair out, we jump in the car (feeling very 'Challenge Annika' and fearing another 'computer says no' experience) we get to the embassy - I think the man at the desk was so afraid of me (Rach) bursting into tears at his desk yet again that he found out passports and returned them in no time. They even refunded our money!! Yay!
So although we are feeling very emotionally battered we have a plan that should get us into Sri Lanka...
Hopefully the next update you all get will be from sunny Sri Lanka and we will both be a lot less stressed out!!
Love Rachel and Rich
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Adonica
non-member comment
visa experience
Sorry the visa thing hasn't gone your way, those things are so complicated. It's ludicrous how many hoops one has to jump just to get a piece of paper in the passport. I'm sure it will get better for you, I guess just try to be as flexible with the plans as possible.... easier said than done! x