One of my biggest headaches before the big trip in February was to obtain an Indian visa. I understand from Fred Olsen that it may be possible in the next month to do an e-visa application and get a promise of a visa without showing our passport to the local High Commission. However, somewhat stubbornly, I had committed myself to completing the paper forms for Albina and myself and wanted to present them to the Indian Visa Centre in Hounslow in person on Wednesday.
I knew the application form was a little imperfect as we had no address in India to submit but I was sure that the explanation about sleeping on the vessel would be OK.
Albina and I turned up half an hour early. It was still bitterly cold and the car temperature showed -2C. The Visa Centre was in a huge seven storey office bloc called Vista Place, surrounding by a gigantic and expensive parking area. However, although the car park was indeed huge, it was still full. Cars were parked there in their hundreds, still covered with frost, suggesting they had been there at least overnight, if not longer. Some actually showed printed price offers, as if they were in a car showroom. It was obviously being used for all sort of purposes. By sheer luck we found a place to park and I checked out the layout before dragging Albina out of a warm car on a fool's errand. There was actually a cafe and some service shops on the ground floor, while the visa centre was on the first floor. Initially, the building did not look to be too full of people but once I reached the main waiting room there must have been a hundred people there.
I brought Albina in, we had a coffee and then we took a lift and ascended. I took a coded number from the clerk at the entrance to the hall and we armed ourselves in the cloak of patient expectancy (a difficult piece of clothing for Albina to wear) and sat down. Actually, bearing in mind the numbers, the system was quite efficient. There were some seven windows open with visa officials and the numbers were called out fairly briskly, as well as being displayed on two large electronic monitors. After an hour, with Albina's patience just beginning to fray, we were summoned. The lady chcked both our applications and rejected them. Frankly, I immediately understood why. I had made a total hash of the applications which I had completed too hastily. She had been checking the application details against our passports. I had mistakenly shown Albina's birthplace as London, instead of Gdansk, and had put down the wrong date (by one day) for the expiry of her passport. I had also failed to show my second Christian name on my application and I described both of us as "UK Brtitish subjects" instead of using the words "United Kingdom". That last item surpised me as I had been following a scrolled down list of options and the clause "United Kingdom" was kept seperate from the other UK citizen options. I had simply failed to spot it. But the other mistakes were mine. I had been too careless. It is not that I didn't know where Albina was born. It was just that the system had suggested "London" for some reason, perhaps because I had shown "London" correctly as my birthplace, and I had failed to spot it and put it right. We had to take back the forms and start again.
Of course Albina was incandescent, having to get up so early on such a cold day, and she took it out on me by criticizing my driving all the way back home. I hastily left her there and travelled to Hammersmith Hospital by bus for my regular bimonthly infusion of Vedolizumab. That also will be a consideration for the future. As we will be away for nearly 3 months on our tour. I need to have the last infusion just before I leave, and the next one immediately after. Otherwise my Crohns Disease could get worse and I could see my holiday being spoilt by having to make sudden exits from whatever I was doing, wherever that may be.
That night I re-entered the corrected visa details, including the name of a contact company in India that Fred Olsen had just passed on to us by letter the previous day. Also, I managed to book a new date at the Visa Centre for January 5th. Fingers crossed this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment