Sri Lanka Trip (Dec, 2009)

News in India focused on cricket and terrorism mainly. The neighboring Sri Lankan cricket team was visiting India and were not doing very well, much to the glee of the Indian cricket fans. When we were in Sri Lanka a week later the newspapers there were lamenting the bad performance of their cricket stars and hoping for a drop in form of the Indian side. Then there was news of the American-Pakistani now in FBI custody, who scoped out sites in India for the Mumbai attackers, getting in/out of India with an American passport, aliases, and a multiple entry Indian tourist visa.

At the very start of our Sri Lanka trip we had a glitch, we were at the Chennai airport, going through immigration, exiting India on way to the flight out, when we were asked to get additional passport stamps. We were wondering why, as we were just tourists and what was wrong with taking a short trip outside India for a change, after all our visa was multiple entry and we were OK going in/out of India as much as we wanted.

Well, remember Mr. American-Pakistani, he had done the same thing, so the India authorities were mad, and they wanted any short trip outside India to extend beyond 2 months, else one had to get special permission to get back in. No more could the bad guys scope out locations in India, fly to Pakistan and inform their handlers and come back to India, all in a week. All this sounds fine but the millions of tourists who make India their base and fly short trips to Nepal, Thailand, Singapore, etc were also screwed now. India is an attractive tourist base as there are great flight deals to all neighboring countries because of increased airline competition.

We asked our airline what all this meant, he basically said that our trip was ruined (ha ha). My stress level is usually high when on travel, but now it got a few notches higher, so now it was time to make mistakes :). As soon as we landed in Colombo airport, I found my travel agent and asked him to take me to the Indian High Commission. After carting our luggage to the parking lot we realized that this was NOT our travel agent but he was waiting for another Das family, not the one from Monterey. He was very polite and we quickly located the right agent and we were on our way.

Our agent dropped us off at the Indian high commission, and told us that he will meet us after parking the car, as no parking was allowed in front of foreign consulates. So I took my laptop bag, left the luggage in the car, and ran to the consulate entrance with Sangita in tow. On speaking to the guard we found out that this was the US consulate and our destination was like a 15 minute walk down the block.

Now here we are in Colombo for the first time, our agent and luggage gone, and we are walking the streets trying to locate the Indian high commission. The only good thing was that we still had daylight, imagine having to do this in the dark. So we finally reached the right building, where our agent met up with us, and informed that all was well, we just needed to check in with the guard and meet the Indian consulate staff and sort out the matter.

My confidence level of dealing with Indian government level staff was never high, again this is based on my teenage year experiences. I was once totally brushed off when I needed to get a state residency certificate in spite of providing all proof, mainly because I could not speak the local language well. I spoke to the authorities at the Indian commission with trepidation and fear, as I kept having visions of the National Geographic show about tourists trapped in foreign countries. Sangita's experiences were better, so she was not so worried. The staff greeted us with a nice full teeth NO, basically it is past 12 PM and they do not accept applications at 4PM, so we had to come back early next day, submit all paperwork with passport and pick it up after 5PM, that's it.

Now all this put a big dent on our travel plans, we were not supposed to be in Colombo or anywhere near the consulates, instead our first 2 days were supposed to be at a beach resort like 3 hours driving distance, and then we were supposed to move closer. We called the travel office and they helped us out, for an extra $30 USD (the de facto world currency still :). By now we had gotten friendly with our car-driver, Dilip, a Sinhalese Buddhist who was always smiling and seemed like the most friendly and innocent guy you will ever meet. He was letting us use his cell phone to call his office and was willing to take us anywhere. So to make the long story short we switched hotels and stayed near to the Indian high commission, went through all the paperwork, got our passports stamped for our reentry into India, enjoyed the the sights of Colombo, shopped at Reebok, enjoyed Chinese whole fish at the hotel, took long walks by the beach and got to know SriLanka better.

Now I have to be honest and say that the folks at the Indian foreign offices are really good people. They just implement the rules from higher ups, and are like peons, they have no personal bias, and have a thankless job, constantly taking abuse from tourists angry about visa delays, but get paid no extra salary, and they still work with a smile. Thanks to their prompt and polite efforts we were back on track with our vacation (yeah !). Also they never charged us a dime for the extra work :).

The travel office had Dilip handle all our travel needs for the 5 days we were in Sri Lanka, Dilip even got us a phone SIM card so we had a local number and could call him when we needed, and even call our relatives in India and complain (ha ha). The beach resort was nice and the hotel was excellent. It was an Indian hotel chain (Taj) with hotels even in San Francisco. Both hotels had a wide range of restaurants, Indian, Sri Lankan, Chinese and some European choices. At the Chinese restaurant we asked the staff why the options were limited, they told us that the Indian tourists had complained about not getting traditional Indian food and did not like the menu choices, again having money does not mean you know the world, you still crave your local craziness, does not matter if the chef is from Beijing or Timbuktu.