Anyone applied for Indian Tourist Visa lately?

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
M

Mercy1

Active Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2010
Messages
620
Car
It's a car - just a car!
Thought we would give India a try for our next hol, and blithely went ahead and booked.
Then the question of the Tourist Visa raised it's ugly head - another £100 quid each on the bill. Worse, the application process looks a nightmare, all sorts of confusing bureaucratic nonsense and a flaky website too.
Looks so bad, we're considering cancelling..!
Anyone done it recently (ie, since Jan 2013 when apparently the new system came in)?
 
Yes - it is a right mess. The website is really poor and the some of the questions are laughable. Is the £100 for 6 months or 12? Alot of (asian) travel agents will charge a fee and take your passport to the embassy, get the visa on and bring it back for you. Saves 2 trips to a poorly organised consulate (B'ham is anyway).
 
With much trepidation, I have just put our Passports in the post to the High Commission.

To do a Royal Mail tracked delivery and return, the postage was £24!

I will post when they are back in my hands....
 
I went to the Indian Grand Prix last October and used the visa again for our annual pilgrimage to Goa in January this year, making it Two trips on One 6 month visa made it a little more palatable.

I live in North East Scotland, but was down visiting my parents just North of Birmingham so applied for the visas at the Birmingham visa office, because my address was outside their jurisdiction area, we had to go to the nearest local post office to re-fill out the forms and buy special delivery envelopes. The bonus was that there was an Indian man in the local post office to check your application and answer any questions you may have.

To be honest, yes it is a nightmare, all the red tape involved in the application coupled with all the red tape at the airport when you arrive too, it's soon forgotten about though when you're in such an amazing country - as long as you can see through the poverty that so many Indians live with.
 
I will be going to the far east for 3 months at the end of the year and intended to have a stopover in Mumbai but changed my mind when looked at the the cost and visa problems. Will give Sri lanka a visit instead, no visa requirement.
 
Palfrem said:
With much trepidation, I have just put our Passports in the post to the High Commission.
To do a Royal Mail tracked delivery and return, the postage was £24.
Click to expand...

Well, you have obviously done the hard bit if you have got as far as that!

What the hell is a person's Educational Qualification, for example? What is a Designation?

The photos are a joke - must be 2ins x 2ins, which rules out passport-style photos, must be right contrast, no smiling, right paper thickness!! I gather there are even companies that are set up in business just to do the photos to the Embassy specification. And that's another tenner for two people.

I presume £24 postage is £6.40 x 4. It would be half that if the Embassy would let you put two applications in one envelope, but for no obvious reason they stipulate only one application in one envelope!

I'm ruing the day I agreed to this jaunt. I've already spent hours scouring the application forms and the requirements - going on holiday shouldn't involve this sort of pain!!
 
The first fulltime job I had the owner of the company said to me "as you get older learn to trust your guts more". Your guts are only just starting to tell you, pays to listen.

Why don't you push on through to New Zealand. :):)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA88AS6Wy_4
 
Each time I got an Indian Visa it was a pita as was arrival. Yet I've been there four times and would return without hesitation, so wonderful was each holiday. Persevere.
 
Charles Morgan said:
Each time I got an Indian Visa it was a pita as was arrival. Yet I've been there four times and would return without hesitation, so wonderful was each holiday. Persevere.
Click to expand...

Thank you. That's two of you mentioned further pain on arrival - is there more fun I should know about!?
 
Airport arrival can take some time.
 
I spent three weeks driving across India and I guess apart from the mountains the thing that stuck in my mind about the place was the Taj Mahal till I found out the guy who had it built chopped the hands of the workers off so they couldn't build another. The place is unusual, the Hotels were nice I guess.
 
I love India it's one the most beautiful and diverse countries I have visited. I make two trips a year on business and I have been very privileged to get to know a number of people there who have gone out of there way to show me more of their country and culture over the years. The people are great but the cities can be a bit daunting at first but if you just go with flow and accept that things work differently I am sure you will have a great time.

Where are you travelling too exactly?

Enjoy.
 
Don't give in! Absolutely one of the most diverse, interesting, frustrating, shocking and beautiful countries in the world. I've been almost every year for the last 21 - usually with my bike. I can't get enough of the place. Get an agent to process if you can justify the extra (I use visa genie), it's worth it for the stress busting. About three years ago they put the visa cost up from £32 to £82 - apparently retaliation for the UK increasing fees for Indians applying for UK visas, now £92 I believe.
 
Last edited:
I also would urge you not to give in at the first hurdle, applying for an Indian visa is a pain, you get that by now. Arriving at any airport in India is also an experience, long lines of people waiting for an Indian policeman to check, double check and triple check your passport and visa, in the extreme heat, then having to deal with all the porters outside the airport, they only want to help by dragging your cases a couple of hundred yards to your transport for a shiny English pound coin.

The average wage where I’ve been in India is around £30 per month so they’re more than happy with their pound.

The next thing that will strike you as you leave the confines of the airport is the filth and desperate poverty that you will see.

In Delhi there were people living on the central reservations of some dual carriageways, dogs seem to have a better life than some. In the morning you would see them awaken, dust themselves off and start their day trying to sell a handful of bic-biros for 50 Rupees – shocking – but that’s how it is. My wife sums it up by saying “as long as they have enough money to put food in their mouths, they’re happy” and that’s just right.

Make no mistake, you will be shocked, you will see extreme poverty, you will see people living under tarpaulins but also you will see one of the most diverse, rich, enchanting places in the world.

Go and enjoy it, I’m off for my 11th visit to India in January, can’t be that bad can it?
 
Has anyone here applied for a visa for the UK for non-EU residents from say Ukraine ever..... we are pretty bad too!!
 
I work in London but manage a couple of teams in India - Mumbai and Pune. I had the good fortune to be able to visit earlier in the year and was completely blown away by the experience. I would love to go back and hopefully will.

I would like to add my voice to those above encouraging the OP to push through the red-tape and not to miss out an amazing opportunity for the sake of the form filling.
 
Thanks for all your helpful advice. To be honest, it has been a toss up between paying £100 admin fee to change to somewhere else, or £200-plus to go through the Visa pantomime.

My travel agent says a lot of people book for India without realising that the Visa is a) expensive and b) really difficult. Then they back out, especially older folk who are not computer savvy (You must apply on line before departure)! Great for Indian tourism!

Anyway, think I'll wade back into the red tape and try to crack it. Have not been encouraged by this Trip Adviser discussion, which started in 2011 and is still going on (see later pages!): -

Problems with online Indian Visa application - India Message Board - TripAdvisor
 
You will love it there. I first went 21 years ago to Goa for 7 months. I was in my early 20's and was blown away. I was a tour rep for Thomsons.

I travelled all over, even hiring a Tuk-Tuk to take me from Calcutta to Goa!

Kerralla is a cool place to go to as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top Bottom