Passport

I had promised myself that I would write an entry if everything went fine. So here goes :

Getting PASSPORT renewed (reissued) at Indian Embassy, NY, USA : (In person)

First things first: If possible, get your passport renewed well in advance. Currently they allow renewal 1 year before expiry.

If you are amongst the lazy (few ?) who wont, read on :

1) Go through all instructions at : http://www.indiacgny.org/php/showContent.php?linkid=225
2) Arrange all the required docs. Exactly what they have specified is required. Nothing less, nothing more.
3) I saw photos of both 2*2 and bigger size (i think us visa size) being accepted. Dont worry. Also, photos require a white background.

4) Go a bit early (30-45 mins) in the morning. They give out coupons and you have to wait for your turn at the counter. Its very organised.

5) If you are in a hurry to get back the passport mention it at the counter when you handover your passport. If you qualify they might suggest you to pay the tatkal fee and talk with the officer. In my case, the lady advised me to submit for normal processing saying that it would be available within 4 business days and if its not I could seek an appointment with the officer and get a passport with 1 year validity done.

6) After 4 business days, when you go for collection - there is a line again. Go a bit early again. Also, they have started having security checks at the consulate now. No bags are allowed. So don’t carry anything which is not needed.

Overall a very good experience.

If you have any questions please let me know and I will try to answer.

Name Surname

All these days I used to think that my name was common.

Till a good friend of mine forwarded me this :

Name + Surname match !! and the news is not good..

Airline ticket reservation

This is going to be a long post but I think I need to put down things which you need to take care of when you book a ticket online. These are especially required with some rogue travel sites around x-(

• Ask the agent to charge your credit card when you are booking the ticket. Do not allow them to delay the charging. They might and will often try and delay it as long as possible to see if some other passenger is trying to get the ticket for the same date and then sell it to him at a higher price. Your reservation will not hold since their clause states that if fare increases between the time of booking to the actual payment time you have to pay the difference. Often you will end up paying more or if you decline to pay more they will ask you to cancel the ticket and pay the standard cancellation charges. Either way you lose.
• If at all you are booking using phone, make absolutely sure that they enter your name details as they are on your passport. Indian passports, atleast the old ones, did not have a middle name field. So be sure to put your firstname and middlename together. Although this has not caused me any actual problems (like not being allowed to board), I have gone through the experience of having my middle name being put in the middle name field and then spending countless hours on the phone trying to get it changed. Guess what ? A name change requires you to pay some fees.
• This is more of common sense: Check the travel dates. mm/dd/yy for people used to dd/mm/yy may cause some problems.
• Look for deals online. You do get good discounts sometimes.

Sutti

The day is finally here.. booked tickets to India !! Here I come :) :P :D

Edit: The day was not meant to be. I thought I had booked tickets to India and this is what anyone who gets a confirmation email with the ticket details would think. But it was not to be. Yatra.com played a bad game... A game which certainly deserves a post of its own... anyways booked the tickets for the next day using some other travel site.. hopefully these guys are good and give me the tickets.

Edit ++ : Yatra.com did not play that bad either. Although they did cancel my reservation.