#20🇮🇳 What is a visa? Is it tasty? That's pizza🍕 A story about visiting the Indian Embassy🎵
■ This is the true story of a woman in her late 40s who, despite having zero English skills, opened Agastya leaves and went on a solo tour to India to resolve her karma.
■ If you haven't read the first part, click here↓
■ Click here for the main story of #20↓
“Can you just suddenly go to India?”
It is not the kind of country you can just casually visit on a whim, so I imagine some of you might find it strange.
I signed up for the karma resolution tour on a whim and momentum, and managed to book my flight tickets in a single night✈️
Little did I know that I would face difficulties with my Indian visa later on😢
Good children, please do not imitate me. You must not go to India suddenly.
“Please plan your trips to India carefully.”
Even if you have a passport, you cannot enter India without a visa.
By the way, it seems many people arrive at the destination and wait in long lines to get an “arrival visa,” but I have zero English skills and this was my first time in India.
If I couldn't communicate in English at immigration and was labeled a suspicious person, and then got “deported” because I couldn't get a visa, that would be complicated.
That is why I thought, “Let's get a visa before I go!” Since the departure date was approaching after the weekend, I hurriedly went to the Indian Embassy in Kudanshita.
However, it seems that Japanese public holidays are embassy holidays💦
I tried to tell the guard in broken English and using Google Translate that I needed a visa urgently.
Then, he called a man from inside. But that man couldn't speak Japanese. And I couldn't speak English.
He was a kind person, and seeing me struggling with Google Translate in my hand, he took me to what looked like a reception area.
The woman at the reception used a little Japanese and English to tell me the opening hours of the Indian Embassy and how to download the online visa application.
She also gave me advice: “Enter the information here and print it out. When you bring it tomorrow, add a note explaining that you need the application approved quickly because your departure date is approaching. I think it would be better to submit it with a letter.”
you should be careful about the expiration date.
When you search for "Indian visa," several websites for visa application agencies appear. However, I couldn't really tell which ones were legitimate and which were scam sites. (Please be careful, as there are fake sites related to Indian visas.)
There are only 4 days left until the departure date.
I sowed these seeds myself.
I have no choice but to reap them = I have to do it myself.
Thus, with Google Translate in one hand, I ended up having to struggle through a 5-page questionnaire entirely in English from the embassy's website.
(For those who are fluent in English, I'm sure this is no big deal...😅) For someone like me who has neglected studying English, I tackled it with the same seriousness I had back when I was studying for entrance exams.
If I didn't get a visa, hundreds of thousands of yen would go down the drain. In a sense, I was desperate.
I opened my laptop in the middle of the night and started entering my name, address, etc., in English.
"What is your parents' nationality?"
"Are your grandparents not of Pakistani nationality?"
"Have you ever belonged to the military or police in the past or present?"
Niche questions like these kept coming.
they were all past their expiration date and cried (T_T)↑
If I had to compare it to something, it felt like an English test where you don't really understand the intent, right?
I heard it takes about 2 hours to input everything if you're not used to it, but I got sleepy halfway through, pressed the wrong thing, and the screen disappeared. When I tried again, it ended up taking about 3 and a half hours😢
Finally, I had to attach my photo and my passport photo, but I was overcome by sleepiness and accidentally pasted the two photos into the wrong fields😓
"Ah!" I panicked and tried to delete the passport photo to paste my own photo back in, but I encountered a mysterious error where I couldn't delete it at all...
By then, the sun had already risen.
Actually, like this, I reached the morning of
three days before departure without a visa😂
Thank you for reading today as well❣️ Namaste🙏
■ Click here for the sequel↓