Two days of Indian madness. Bill, Anik and me set off in the morning to drop into the travel office that sorted out our visas for India and then go to the German embassy to get Anik’s birth certificate translated. But what we thought will take us three hours turned into a full day mission as all application forms had to be filled out again, the embassy wouldn’t translate, but only stamped the translation, which took hours… Never felt so unwelcome. Poor Finn being on his own all day. But at the end of the day all was sorted – we thought.
The following day started relaxed. We had a good night sleep, a late breakfast and started packing our things. Ambu had invited us for lunch in their office in town. We didn’t want to go back into the busy centre, but we couldn’t turn down the invitation. Then we got the phone call from our tourist office to come to the Indian embassy as quickly as possible. So we rushed out the door, into a taxi to be stuck in traffic once again. The next hours we spent waiting in front of the embassy now and then signing forms. They even wanted us to sign in Anik’s passport. I started to change my mind about going to India if they make it that difficult to get a visa. Not talking about the costs… But finally we made it and our applications were satisfying enough that we can come back after 5 working days to pick up the visas. One day before we have to be out of the country… We made it for lunch anyway and headed back to our homestay after that. Booked tickets to Chitwan as Bardia, our first choice seemed far too much hassle and time was running out. 34 hours on the bus wasn’t worth the 4 nights we could have stayed.
Here our last pictures of Kathmandu
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.. And a few pictures of the madness on Kathmandu’s streets…
