139 Tuesday Oct 19

Tuesday Oct 19 Day 139

Last week I mentioned to another resident of Kilmarnock about my plans to leave India. She works for UNICEF and has been in and out of India many times. There are so many things that could go wrong with my tight schedule and she recommends to everyone who flies out of Delhi to stay overnight and get to the airport 3 1/2 hours before departure. I was already having concerns about the schedule. The train arrives 3 hours before departure and it takes an hour to get from the train station to the airport. 10/19/10

18

5

was thinking about this yesterday morning and realized that the cost of a 2 night stay would probably be greater than the cost of a taxi from Mussoorie to the Delhi airport. It turns out that the taxi costs half as much. The best part is I shall not have to go through the constant hassles of hiring taxis and coolies and constantly watching my luggage. The drive will take 6 to 8 hours from my gate to the airport with time to spare. No stressing out about all the possibilities of things going wrong.

One of my classmates was denied a Visa to India. This happened a few days before he and his wife were to fly out. Mac went to Washington DC and spoke to the man in charge of issuing visas. Mac was born in a city that is now part of Pakistan. Mac was born in 1942 and Pakistan did not exist until 1947. Except of 2 one year stays in the US (1947 and 1954) Mac lived in India for a total of 16 years. The most unfortunate item was that the city of his birth is listed on his passport. So to Indian bureaucrats Mac must be a citizen of Pakistan and therefore not allowed into India. The visa man had never heard of the US Family passport in use before 1960. Today everyone must have an individual passport and the clerk wanted to know if Mac had ever had an Indian or Pakistani passport. There was one way around all this was for Mac to file a “renunciation” form. The clerk refused to tell him what it was or how to get one. I figure that Mac was supposed to renounce his Pakistani citizenship. So Mac is not coming to India and it looks like the Indian travel agent he used will not refund anything. I was told NOT to book anything until you had your Visa for India. The Indian government is being very tight with Visas from North America. Woodstock is missing 3 teachers held up by visa issues and they are all from Canada.