In case you have been wondering what has happened to us, Nina and I just want you to know that we are in Zagreb, we have been here since the 30th of September and we look like being here until at least the end of the coming week (17th October). Why I hear you ask? Zagreb is a nice enough city but that seems like a long time in one place. Well you will have to read the rest of the entry to find out.
The answer is visas for India. We are planning on a short visit to India and Nepal on our way to Australia for Christmas, and India has not yet seen the sense in making it easy for tourists and their money to enter the country.
As I said we arrived in Zagreb on the 30th Sept and the next day we went to the Indian Embassy (which was not easy as their website had the wrong address) in the hope of submitting our application. We had been diligent and read their website for all requirements and felt sure we had it covered.
But no! Not only did we need a plane ticket for our exit (which we had) but also one for our entry which we did not have, though why it is a problem for India if we cannot find our way into the country is beyond my understanding. In addition the passport photos we had were not good enough so "new ones please".
Oh, by the way the Embassy is closed for the next two days [2nd, 3rd Oct for Indian holidays] so you cannot submit your application until Monday 6th Oct and the application will take a minimum of 7 working days to process. As it happens the Embassy is also closed on Wed 6th [a Croatian holiday] so that means if you apply on Monday the earliest you can get your visa is Friday the 17th Oct.
And it may take longer if the review in Australia does not come back in time !!.
So on Monday we returned with all the necessary additional stuff in hand, but the weirdness was not over.
The lady taking our application noticed that we had Australian passports but had given a US home address. She informed us that we would also need to provide an Australian address so that the Indian Embassy in Australia could check us out.
What!, we have not lived there for 16 years and do not have an address in Australia. In the end we were allowed to give the name of a city in Australia. I have no idea what they will do with the information and we were both left wondering why the Indian Embassies do not get the idea that people don't always live in the country from which they have passports.
To cap all this off we were required to hang around at the Embassy and eventually be interviewed by one of the (we assumed) senior guys. Why did we think he was senior, he wore a good suit and had an office, pretty definitive we thought. He basically wanted to know why we did not apply for the visa in Frankfurt as that is where the plane ticket for our entry into India originates. That took a 20 minute explanation.
The good news is that the application process is over, but of course, we do not know when the visas will be approved. We will call on the morning of the 17th.
So where are we staying during all of this. Well on the southern ring route that bypasses the city there is service center (you know one of those places with gas station, truck parking and restaurant). Well this one has both a motel and an attached autocamp (what we would call a campground in the US). Reasonably nice environs with grass and trees, a very presentable toilet/shower block, great hot showers, electricity and the motel has wifi in the lobby which we can use as much as we like. It is only a bus+tram ride of about 40 minutes to the city center.
The place is called Motel Plitvice. During our stay here there has been a steady trickle of other motorhomes passing through.
The motels website does not appear to work so I have provided a link to a youtube video of the place (it is worth a look).
So until the Indian Embassy comes through with our visas (and returns our passports) we are stuck here. At least the center of the city is nice so it is worth a visit every couple of days.