Day 61 - Kathmandu, Nepal. Submitting Indian Visa Paperwork.

Overnight a storm blew in, it felt & sounded like it was raging just outside our window, keeping us awake for most of the early hours. Once the storm exhausted itself & I feel asleep, Tom was abruptly awoken by his stomach which was violently angry & evacuating something he had consumed. Both of us have only been in Nepal a few days & have both suffered from individual gastro upsets, it was bound to happen at some stage! Lucky we have a large medicine bag, full to the brim of various medications to deal with these situations.

It's no surprise that when our alarm goes off at 7.30am & 8.30am, both are ignored. At 9.30am we eventually get out of bed & get ready for the day. Today we are going to submit our paperwork for our Indian Visa at the Indian embassy in Kathmandu. Its located only a couple of kilometres from our accommodation, a journey made slightly more hazardous by the deep puddles of water, mud & slippery surfaces, evidence of the severity of the storm last night.
We arrive & take a token number, Tom checks the notice board & we realise we forgot to photograph our Nepal visas ! Thankfully it's a job that takes only a few minutes as a print shop is handily located next to the Visa application centre.

We then take a seat & wait, listening to a nearby rooster crow & laughing at a golden labrador who must live in the house next door, but is walking along the top of a brick wall fence. When we arrived, ticket number 13 is being served, our tickets are 36 & 37 but it's a  quick wait & we had our turn at the counter after only 2 hours.  When its our turn at the counter our paperwork is examined and then rejected as its not filled out according to their specifications. Its a real shame, we spent a few hours the previous day researching & then filling the paperwork out online, before printing it at a print shop. The Indian Visa website has minimal information on their requirements for the forms, so we had to do our own research based on other peoples experiences. The forms are quite large with a lot of very specific questions. On our forms we had 1 spelling error, we gave too much detail on how we planned to cross the border between Nepal & India, we also listed our hotel's address as our current address & contact information as well as an address in Australia in answer to another question, which was all wrong.

Applying for Visa's is by far one of the most frustrating things we have to do while on holiday! We spend so much time preparing & reading, thinking we may finally have the process simplified, only to be wrong. Each visa has its own specific questions, require's its own specific answers, has its own back ground checks, they all have their own different application process' & they all seem to have a grumpy administrative authority that is too eager to find your mistakes, decline your application & make you start again. 

We each have a couple of friends who have travelled through India, it's difficult and tedious for everyone who we have spoken to, which makes us feel better. 

By the time we get back to Thamel, its early afternoon, we hunt down a cozy cafe with free wifi, order drinks, fire up the laptop & start again. The process takes up the rest of the afternoon, we battle the usual Nepalise black out's & fractious wifi signal. 

What a day! 

- Alli