Visa troubles and bigger troubles

After two hours filling in the on-line application, nearly £80 on the credit card and the best part of two days spent in the Indian visa agency I look at our passports with their new visas for India - and they are for the wrong period - barely covering two weeks of our planned six week stay! Back to the visa office:
'You have given me the wrong visa, I asked for six months I have only got three months'
'What is your occupation?' (my reply of 'management consultant' provokes no comment, or enlightenment)
'Well it is at their discretion whether they give three or six months'
'But I clearly asked for six months so it covered our planned dates in India, I gave the dates on the form'
'Oh they never look at the dates of travel..'

And so on to the supervisor.
'What is your occupation' (again that does not provide a reason for our plight)
'Well we can appeal to the High Commission but I warn you now we won't get an answer before you go'

So nothing for it but to start again, more form filling, trips to the visa office and another £80!

But this time it worked, we have the visas and they are for the right period! And they are multiple entry, in fact we can spend the next six months going into and out of India.

Which at the moment, with the dreadful events in Mumbai does not seem such a good idea. Added to the present occupation of Bangkok airport and things along our planned route seem a trifle troubled. I can see we will be visiting the Foreign and Commonwealth Office web site with its advice for travelers quite a lot during our trip.

Only two more visas to get. Jordan because we fly in but have no flight out (we expect to leave by boat for Egypt) and Egypt because we need a full visa to travel around the whole country and searching for that in the port of Aquaba might be a nuisance.

For other places we either don't need visas or our supply of dollars and passport photos will get us by at various airports and border crossings - as long as they don't want to know our occupations!

We have our tickets!

On this wet August day (the English summer!) we made a trip down to Trailfinders and have come away with our itinerary finalised and our Round the World tickets purchased. And apart from the still rising fuel surcharges (which encouraged us to buy the tickets now rather than later) the ticket cost was as estimated.

Flying with the Star Alliance group of airlines has meant our preferred route was feasible with direct flights in all cases - with the exception of an additional stop in Dubai which will give us an opportunity to meet the family of our current house guest Ahmed - so an additional pleasure to look forward to.

So our itinerary is:

• We leave the UK on Tuesday 6th January and fly to Amman in Jordan (Petra and Wadi Rum among other places) then overland and ferry through Jordan to Eqypt (Sinai, Luxor, Cairo, Alexandria)
• We fly from Cairo to Dubai on Thursday 29th January
• Then Dubai to Delhi on Sunday 1st February for a six week tour of India mostly by train
• We finally leave India (Kolkata) on Friday 13th March for Singapore where we hope to meet our new blogging friend Chun See and for Brian to revist old haunts from his teenage years
• After a week or so in Singapore we travel to Sarawak, back to Peninsula Malaya, train up to Thailand and Cambodia and finally leave South East Asia by a flight from Bangkok to Tokyo on Tuesday 21st April
• We will travel in Japan until Saturday 2nd May when we fly to Vancouver and visit neice and nephew and their families in British Columbia.
• We then travel overland to the Rockies, take an internal flight to Montreal and visit Tess' sister Sue and husband Paul until our departure for London on Sunday May 31st

Something to look forward to! We now have plenty of time to arrange to meet friends, get visas organised, check our innoculations and also get the house let (and a thousand other things to do).

Getting Started

Tess and Brian will be leaving for their round the world trip early in January 2009 and expect to be away until June. Its a sort of gap year for oldies (we are both now in our 60s) and we intend to leave carrying no more than a hand-luggage sized backpack each

We hope to visit Jordan, Egypt, India, Singapore, Malaysia (Borneo and Peninsula), Thailand, Cambodia, Japan and Canada. In some of these places we hope to meet old friends and we will be visiting family in both Vancouver and Montreal in Canada. Brian will be returning to Singapore for the first time in 46 years having left as a teenager in 1962.