For which preparation is fraught with irritation
and Himself gets really cranky
When Himself looked winsome as he suggested I come to India with him in far off February 2015, I looked into those twinkly blue eyes and gave in. My inner conversation was this: Yes, it is crowds of people. Yes, it is noisy. Yes, it is overwhelming. Yes, it is hotter than hell. But yes, it is the right time to go. I am healthy enough, and if there is a next time, I might not be. And he LOVES the place. I love to see him so excited to go, even if the real reason is work. India, you see, was not high on my bucket list, if there at all.
So I left him to the planning, which grew to include a trip to this thrilling place: http://www.junglelodges.com/kabini-river-lodge, where it is rumored that the tigers are populous in February. But elephants and all sorts of wild things we usually see in zoos are there so it promises to be amazing.
He made the reservations for the round trip flight using most of our saved airmiles for my ticket, hotel one, the conference venue, hotel two, the hotel closer to General Electric where he is invited, the reservations for the safari park....but at this writing, the reservations for hotel three for the last night and day of our stay in Bangalore are still unclear. But that is nothing. We may not yet be going.
Why? You might ask, at this late date, are we not completely sure of departure. In one word, VISA.
I never in my life thought that Indian bureaucracy extended to the green, flat shores of Cheeseland, but boy-howdy, mama, they do. About two weeks ago, we had our passport photos taken to make sure we had light background, 51 by 51 cm photos. Then Himself sat before the computer and spent a couple of hours entering forms and collecting various data, making copies and collating it all for both of us. He needed a convention visa. Since he has done this before and knew it was a tangled mess, he was able to get his visa info in a tidy, thick stack in a couple of hours. For my visa, a simpler tourist request was filled out. Mind you, simple does not mean short. My parents, my life history including education and reason for ever thinking I'd want to visit India included, and that just to visit the country for 10 days.
I promise I am not going to suddenly decide to live there illegally. I will probably kiss the floor of the airplane on the return leg.
With his schedule so booked, it was a little messy to find a day to drive all the way to Den Haag ( which is a truck filled crazy highway awful drive that I hate with every fibre of my being.) but Tuesday he carved out some time and we arrived at the Embassy well before the 11:30 closing time. We followed the signs for Visa and Passports down the drive to the basement. Upon entry there was no one manning the window so we sat down to wait. Minutes dragged by and other patrons appeared; finally someone shouted through the window to see if anyone would respond. A woman issued forth. We lined up. We approached with our thick stacks in hand only to be informed that the office for visas is around the corner and down the street now...this was not news shared on the website where Himself got the visa information. ugh.
Leaving the car in a rather illegal parking spot because there just isn't anywhere to park around the embassies, we walked to the visa office and joined the line of supplicants. The nightmare began.
While it seemed previous experience had netted a good application for Hubby, my application was sadly flawed. The back ground of the photo and my hair are close in color. It gave the officer some pause, but he finally passed it. Then, suddenly I needed a conference visa even though I won't be attending any of it. Baffling. And the worst was the name. I use ( as many Dutch wives do) a hyphen in my last name. Family-Maiden. It's normal and cultural. The software for India visas does not allow for hyphens and eliminates it with no space between the names. But, my USA passport uses a carat between the names down in the code line, thus a space needs to be inserted for the name on the visa to match the name in the USA passport. There was no space between the two last names. ( Got all that?) It did not end there. My first name is a double name, like Mary Ann, or Bobbie Jo. I started putting the two names together, no space, as an adult because helpful folks misspelled my name so often. Hubby is used to that. So there was no space between my first names. It did not match my passport. On top of all that,we needed a copy of our marriage license. Visa application failed. In a major way. We had to come back with all new papers for me and the marriage license.
Hubby went back to work in high dudgeon. Two or so hours of administration, two hours of travel for nothing. My good hearted, patient, slow to anger man was furious. He was ready to shut down the whole project. BUT there was a window in his really complicated awful schedule where he could go the next afternoon between meetings. He came home Tuesday very late from an inland conference, reworked my visa application, copied the marriage license and we fell into bed after midnight. At least another hour of filling in and copying. (and being unhappy.)
Wednesday we really had to high tail it ( down that crappy horrible highway) to get to that office before it closed at 2:30. But we squeaked in the door with a minute to spare, and got in line. The worker bee took one look at my form and that was it. There was no middle initial in my name. My name had to match the passport. In my passport is a middle initial. In my birth certificate there is not. In between was my infant baptism at which the Catholic priest refused to baptize unless there was a Saint's name. Thus my then recently deceased maternal grandmother's name became my middle name. It depends on the document whether the middle initial is there or not. No one has ever gotten that picky about an H in the history of man.
I burst into tears because I knew Hubby was on the verge of cancellation and I really wanted him to go even if I could not, and he would not go without me. He is not only one of the organizers of this conference, but he is the keynote speaker. ...It was too late in the day to even go somewhere to get it fixed. On the other hand, this worker bee decreed that a tourist visa was quite enough for me. That is nice because it costs half of what the fancier visa does. But still we left the office very sadly.
There was only one tiny ray of hope. There was a couple of hours on Friday morning before he had an afternoon chockablock with meetings. If we left predawn and hurried, we could get to the office and back in time. Monday the visa office was closed. Any other day til we left, he was too booked to go back. It looked pretty bleak.
But that is what we did. It took us an extra 30 minutes in the thick fog of the early rush hour to get there, the line was nearly out the door long, but we did it. We even had two perfect forms filled out: one tourist, one conference because who knew which worker would be at the desk. It was another long wait to pay: we chose to have courier service so no more horrible trips to Den Haag. Another long wait and our faces and fingerprints were digitized. Easy when you know how.
On the other hand the visa will not get here until 2-3 days before we leave IF the visas are granted. There still is that hurdle. Any joy in this journey has been sucked right dry. Watch this space.
