India is one of those wonderful countries where you must have a visa to enter. Last Monday I dragged Wolfram out of bed early to go to the Indian embassy. After 1 hour standing in the cold we got into a tiny little office where a employee from the embassy asked me what type of passport I have."well, a normal one" I answered. "hum, you have to go to the visa office in Dongzhimen". Quid? He handed me a little card with an address and told me to get a taxi and go there. We grabed Nigel, our partner in waiting and went to the other office. The Indian embassy actually outsources the visa application to a Chinese office. This means that you have to interact with Chinese employees with very limited English. I will not write about the complex process, nor the unclarity on timings, nor how expensive it was (more than 150 euros), nor the number of phone calls I had to make, nor the number of times I went to the visa office nor that there were moments I just didn't want to go to such a country anymore. Bottom line is that I got my passport back today, with a visa inside :) Now I can fly to India.
The only scary thing is that my visa is a single entry visa, which means I will have to go through this again to get a multiple entry one...
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