The bits in between
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2008
1
56
215
Trip End
May 27, 2010
Harpenden,
England,
United Kingdom
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Rose & Chris's, Harpenden
Rainy and very cold
Haven't written up for ages. It's been a great big whirlwind of a trip. Our friends and family have gone way beyond the call of duty putting us up and ferrying us from pillar to post. It's been really great to catch up with everyone and here were are 2 days before leaving and we're STILL catching up. Today Astral, Jorg and our godchildren Talise and Rupert are coming over for the day. We're having an early Christmas dinner seeing as we won't be in the UK.
Need to explain why, on the 23rd November, we are still in the UK. Originally, our flights to India were on the 17th. That was when we thought you could simply walk into the Indian High Commission, queue for a bit, pay your money and walk away with a visa in your passport. The visa process has been outsourced (can you believe it?). It's now handled by http://in.vfsglobal.co.uk/ The big problem we had was that the MINIMUM time between application and collecting your visa is 3 days, and we worked out it would be VERY tight and very stressful to try and stick to the 17th, hence the change of dates to fly. We made the applications online (takes ages) that way you can make an appointment and deliver your application personally. It was all very straightforward, having made the appointment you go to VFS (round the corner from Victoria Coach Station) just before your appointment, collect a numbered ticket and join the appointment queue, it took Dave about 10 mins to be seen. You can then track your visa online. From initial application to the tracker saying the visa was ready for collection was 4 working days (with an Indian Bank Holiday and a weekend in between). If you don't complete the application on line you will need to telephone for an appointment, which will cost you a whopping 95p per minute! Otherwise, you can walk in and wait and wait and wait .............
Knowing that the visas were being processed and we had successfully changed our flights, we decided to stay in Bristol a while longer. We went to the local Nomad clinic to find out what jabs we needed. Of course it's in their interest that you have EVERYTHING and that THEY give it to you, but we decided to see what we could get on the NHS. Montpelier Health Centre in Bristol (where we are registered) runs travel clinics every so often and if you want jabs you HAVE to attend one of these clinics. They give you advice (even if you don't need it) and will give you certain jabs free, in our case Typhoid, Hep A and B, Diptheria etc. However, when I spoke to them the next clinic was due December 8th, clearly after we had left and they would NOT let us see a nurse (not even a GP) outside of the travel clinic. So feeling very hacked off with them we wandered down to Nomads and had the lot and paid over Ģ181 for the privilege. We are now going to de-register from our GP so that they can't claim money for having us on their books!
Dave is currently overhauling the bikes and I've spent the morning sorting out kit, which is now lying in several piles on our bed waiting for each of us to decide what we will take and what we will leave behind. I'm currently sorting out tax forms; you can complete a leaving the UK tax form - P85, and, claim investments with no tax taken off - R85, both downloadable from the IR website.
Comments
Trouble at 'Mill?
Just seen the news about Mumbai. Hope everything is OK. Get in touch soon and put our minds at rest. Take care of each other and be careful. Keith
Lynne and Dave are fine
For anyone looking here for an update, then can't do it as its chaos, but they are both fine, bit of a near miss, but all OK.
Lynne will update when she can on this blog.