3 Days to Go

Just 3 days until I get on the plane to India. My experience of getting a visa was my first taste of Indian bureacracy, I had to go to the Indian High Commission in Birmingham and started queuing at 6am, rumour and innuendo swept up and down the queue. By 8am I was at the door of the High Commission and by 8.15 a man gave me a ticket number 710. Once upstairs there was a counter like the supermarket deli at number 660 so only 50 people in front of me. By 10.30 I was at the counter handed over my form, passport and 30 quid and was told to come back at 3pm. I retreated to Unltd's Brum office and did some work and returned a little after 3 for another 1 and a half hours of internal queuing. In the end I reached the little window and my passport was returned to me with the holy grail of my Indian Visa. The India High Commission could do with an efficiency expert as they could issue twice as many visas in half the time with a few changes to the system, is this the shape of things to come I wonder!

It's cold and wet in Yorkshire, apparently over 35 degrees in India. Bags getting packed and mindset getting ready. Next stop the sub-continent.