Indian administration

Getting a visa to visit India has never been easy. Usually I would show up at the embassy at 7:30 am to wait for two hours until opening at 9:30 am, catch a number, wait for 1,5 h until my number got called, sweat fearing I could have forgotten something essential ( like the 50 € in cash ) deposit passport and papers, get a slip of paper to fetch my passport in two days...

Now....that is nothing compared to the actual chaos:

The demand can be downloaded on internet . The same website informed me that henceforth you are not allowed to deposit more than 3 passports per person ( we are four in our family!) and that per day not more than 75 individuals will be admitted; travel agencies are kindly requested to present with computerized data on wednesdays...
That already promised nothing good.

Two weeks ago I convinced my husband to go with me to the embassy. We were there in the morning at 7:30 h . The queue was about 100m long.......
After a short discussion we abandoned for it was obvious that there were more than 75 people in front of us, the first had arrived at 6 am ( my guess was more like 200 ).

I decided to try the travel agency. The travel agency called their visa messenger service. I was informed that the price would be 125 € per passport + 35 € for the messenger to carry it to the service...and that they only treat emergencies right now, please contact again around the 15th of november... Allright!

I convinced my son for a substantial amount of money ( appealed to his business sense) to get up at 4:30 am and to be present at 6 am in queue at the embassy. I joined him in queueing at 8:40 am. There were about 30 people in front of him and according to him the first had arrived at midnight. Behind him was about 200 m of queue.

Now disasters like that give way to all kinds of rumour trying to explain the actual situation which is getting desperate for the average tourist. Here are some explanations delivered by the people next to us in line:

a professionnal messenger: they installed a new software to treat what was done by hand before, it worked until they lost a passport deposited by a travel agency, now travel agency messengers have to queue like everybody and adaption to the new software is creating delays.

the messenger from the OECD ( yes-surprise they have to queue too): It's an act of revenge for there seem to be problems with the French embassy in India too. And he spiced his comment with stories of other embassies .

a tourist: nobody can explain,, travel agencies refuse to take on the task and turn their eyes to the ceiling if you talk about travel visa to India.

As the opening hour approached the situation was getting tense, the French being notorious queue cutters. They casually walk up to the front to have a 'look' at the queue. Then they start talking to the people in the queue, light a cigarette and the next thing you know is that they have merged with the crowd. People around me were getting nervous cause the count in front of us seemed to dangerously approach the fatal number. A handicaped guy kind of played the clown to gain his place in front while yelling loudly against : 'those who come in front and cut the queue'- which he did himself. Suddenly the gate opened! The crowd closed in and moved in block forward.
The door was only half opened to let people pass one by one while the queue had been at least about 3-4 people wide- suspense! We moved forward through the glass door to the reception desk where an officer handed out pink tickets.I got 413 ( why does 13 stick to me?) my son 414. I looked with reverence at the pink piece of paper- I had made it ! The count on the digital board started at 385. ...
Being a samaritan I accepted to pass the passport of the other of a girl that had come to late and was desperately looking for somebody whose count was below 3/per person. Again we spent about 1 h exchanging experiences with all kinds of various people.

When I finally deposited the passports the lady behind the counter filled out a 2 slip carbon copy- one white, one rose- I got 1 white slip to fetch 2 French passports, 1 white slip to fetch the German passport ( mine). My son got 2 rose slips to fetch 1 French passport per slip- don't ask about the logic behind but wish me luck for the retrieval!