Here's a word from the wise - should any of you be in the unfortunate situation of needing a same day service for an Indian Visa.
Being mostly based overseas long term, but rarely resident in a country, I sometimes find it difficult to get Visa's for certain countries, India being one of them.
To get an indian visa from a consulate in a country which you do not have a passport from, you either need a residence permit in that country, or jump through various other hoops such as having a letter from a company in that country as to why you are there, and then the applications can take an indeterminant length of time.
So.... Needing to go to India directly after leaving Korea, but not being able to be with out my passport for more than a week due to other travel commitments, I had to return to the UK to get a same day visa enroute from Korea to Mumbai via shanghai and London.
I arrived on sunday evening, and booked into a hotel on the Strand within 5 minutes walk of the Indian High Commission on Aldwych. (I later discovered I could have enjoyed the Waldorf which is directly opposite where I susequently spent nearly 5 hours queuing on the pavement!)
Co-incidentally to my arrival back in the UK, my parents had heard a feature on the radio of someone telling of their ordeal in trying to get an Indian Visa, and a little research on the internet confirmed how chaotic it had become and how early the queue started forming.
SO I STARTED QUEUING AT 4AM, and there was already 60 odd people in front of me.
By the time the queue number allocation window opened at 8:30 there were many hundreds of people behind me. (Search YouTube for various videos of this!)
Apparently they can only deal with a maximum of 1500 visa's a day, and since a number of travel agents couriers camp out all night and grab large quantities of queue numbers (1 number = 1 passport)very soon after the queue starts moving at 8:30, all the numbers for the day are allocated, and you run the risk of being given a queue number for two weeks in the future.
Now, you can avoid all this hassle by of course dealing with it through a travel agent and having them do the queueing, but a number of those are now saying allow up to six weeks to get your passport back since they are also at the mercy of queue numbers, so if you need a visa in a short time scale the only thing to do is join the queue very early.
Once I was inside the visa hall at shortly before 9am the whole process with pretty efficient (if a little disorderly and confusing at first), but I heard that by 9:30 "on the day" queue numbers had been exhausted, and as I left with my shiny new visa at 10:30 there was a near riot outside!
What surprised me the most was the number of people in the queue around me who were going to India on Holiday the next day, and had left the visa to the last minute, only to discover how difficult it has become!
Being mostly based overseas long term, but rarely resident in a country, I sometimes find it difficult to get Visa's for certain countries, India being one of them.
To get an indian visa from a consulate in a country which you do not have a passport from, you either need a residence permit in that country, or jump through various other hoops such as having a letter from a company in that country as to why you are there, and then the applications can take an indeterminant length of time.
So.... Needing to go to India directly after leaving Korea, but not being able to be with out my passport for more than a week due to other travel commitments, I had to return to the UK to get a same day visa enroute from Korea to Mumbai via shanghai and London.
I arrived on sunday evening, and booked into a hotel on the Strand within 5 minutes walk of the Indian High Commission on Aldwych. (I later discovered I could have enjoyed the Waldorf which is directly opposite where I susequently spent nearly 5 hours queuing on the pavement!)
Co-incidentally to my arrival back in the UK, my parents had heard a feature on the radio of someone telling of their ordeal in trying to get an Indian Visa, and a little research on the internet confirmed how chaotic it had become and how early the queue started forming.
SO I STARTED QUEUING AT 4AM, and there was already 60 odd people in front of me.
By the time the queue number allocation window opened at 8:30 there were many hundreds of people behind me. (Search YouTube for various videos of this!)
Apparently they can only deal with a maximum of 1500 visa's a day, and since a number of travel agents couriers camp out all night and grab large quantities of queue numbers (1 number = 1 passport)very soon after the queue starts moving at 8:30, all the numbers for the day are allocated, and you run the risk of being given a queue number for two weeks in the future.
Now, you can avoid all this hassle by of course dealing with it through a travel agent and having them do the queueing, but a number of those are now saying allow up to six weeks to get your passport back since they are also at the mercy of queue numbers, so if you need a visa in a short time scale the only thing to do is join the queue very early.
Once I was inside the visa hall at shortly before 9am the whole process with pretty efficient (if a little disorderly and confusing at first), but I heard that by 9:30 "on the day" queue numbers had been exhausted, and as I left with my shiny new visa at 10:30 there was a near riot outside!
What surprised me the most was the number of people in the queue around me who were going to India on Holiday the next day, and had left the visa to the last minute, only to discover how difficult it has become!
