Why You Should Never Go to India

Seriously, never. Unless you’re a citizen of Japan, New Zealand or about 8 other countries you should never visit India. You see India is one of the few countries in the world where most people can’t get a tourist visa on arrival. When you visit almost any other country with a U.S. passport you fill out your visa application after you arrive at your destination airport. In 2010 I visited Oman and the United Arab Emirates, both extremely gorgeous countries I might add. When we arrived at Oman we filled out a short application, less than a page, paid our twenty riyals and were on our way. When we entered the UAE we didn’t even have to fill out an application, they just stamped our passport. No fee, no fuss. To visit India however you need to get a tourist visa. In order to get that visa you have to deal with the morons working at the Indian consulate office and the bigger morons at Cox and Kings Global Services.

Let me be clear, my vocabulary isn’t nearly capable of describing the complete ineptitude and stupidity these two companies operate with. In Islam, we believe that when we are inflicted with pain some of our sins are forgiven. No suffering is done in vain. As such my father should have all 50+ years of his life wiped clean for what he had to put up with. Cox and Kings is the newest company the Indian Embassy decided to outsource its visa issuing to. Before, you just walked into the consulate office, dropped off your applications and picked up your passports that night. We applied for our visas the first day Cox and Kings were open, May 21^st.

I did all the applications online and then my dad took them to the buffoons at Cox and Kings. He lost a whole days work because they took some 7 hours to issue him a receipt. Seriously, people were in there for hours waiting for a receipt AFTER their application had been processed. Eventually he got his receipt, came home tired as death but was glad that it was over; little did he know it had barely just begun.

The following day one of the guys says that three of the six applications need to be notarized because they were applications for minors. Then he tells my dad that he and my mom need to renounce their Indian citizenships. Apparently holding a U.S. passport and having U.S. citizenship certificates isn’t enough proof for them. My mom got lucky, her old Indian passport said it was “cancelled due to new citizenship.” My dad’s passport didn’t and he had to pay an extra free and delay the application because they needed proof he renounced his previous citizenship. Keep in mind this entire conversation wasted another day of paid work because they were just so damn slow.

A few days later my dad comes home holding four passports. My mom, dad, and baby sisters were done along with my own. My brother and other sister’s remained at large. This was on Thursday, May 29^th, our flight to India left on June 3^rd. The notarization delay couldn’t be the problem otherwise my baby sister’s would’ve been delayed as well.  Because nobody in the offices could communicate beyond the level of an ape my dad had no idea what was wrong. Eventually on Monday, the day before our flight, my Dad got an explanation.

My sister was born in India, but because both my parents were U.S. citizens by this point my sister was a U.S. citizen by birth. However, on her U.S. passport her place of birth says India. The incompetent fools at Cox and Kings wanted to see her old Indian passport and make sure she renounced her non-existent Indian citizenship. My dad tried desperately to convince him that she’s been a U.S. citizen by birth (it also said that on her application but they chose to ignore that) but to no avail. Oh, and they also lost my little brother’s passport. The consulate said Cox and Kings had it, Cox said the consulate had it. Bottom line: Monday night, no visas.

At this point all we could do was pray but you know what they say: hope for the best, plan for the worst or something along those lines. Basically we had decided that the most cost efficient last resort would be for three visa holders to go and three to stay back, costing us somewhere between $2100 - $2500 extra. That’s more than we were planning to spend during our entire trip.

The day of our flight things weren’t looking good. My dad said that they still haven’t found his passport yet and my sister still hasn’t gotten her visa. Regardless we loaded up the van with all our bags and went to Cox and Kings to help out. Our flight left at 6:10. The night before I established a cutoff time of 3:30pm. If we didn’t get them by then we had to book it or risk missing this flight too. Three thirty came and went with no visas. We decided to hold out because my dad had skillfully bullied a worker into handling our issue so we wouldn’t miss our flight. We decided to try and wait a little longer and at 3:45 they found my little brothers passport and told us both passports were at the consulate office where we would have to pick them up.

Before I continue let me explain how this works, Cox and Kings and the consulate are two separate offices, two separate buildings about 4 miles away around Mass Ave. in D.C. Cox handles all the paperwork and such and then ships off the passports to the consulate office to get the actual visa stamped.

At 3:45 we drove to the consulate and there was no one at the desk. I banged on the employee door for about 5 minutes before the secretary came out and talked to us. Then the passport officer came out to argue that my sister still needed to renounce her citizenship. I thought that maybe my dad didn’t explain it clearly to the guy because miscommunications can happen between two non-native speakers. I explained the situation and the law repeatedly such that a 4 year old could understand. He eventually caved and made my dad write a sworn statement saying that my sister was a citizen. Then, at 4:45 we had all six passports and visas and drove fast and furious style to the airport.

Like Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption I’d like to tell you that the story ended happily and we made our flight. But stories don’t always end nicely. We made it about 10 minutes after baggage check-in had closed. They said it was too late. While we were trying to figure this out the lady at the Lufthansa counter said unless we go carry-ons only there’s nothing we can do. My mom panicked and started shoveling stuff from our suitcases into our carry-ons. I told her it’s stupid but she tried anyway. Luckily the lady at the counter  said that we weren’t going to make it and cancelled our boarding passes. So we got our visas but now don’t have a plane to get on.

Our economy seats didn’t come with any travel protection benefits. The charge for each person was the fare-difference plus a $300 change fee. Total came out to $4000, we paid around $6500 for our initial reservations. That’s $6500 roundtrip and they wanted $4000 to go one-way. The lady at the Lufthansa counter wasn’t very sympathetic at first, she had just dealt with a family who missed the flight because of traffic, she didn’t buy that excuse one bit. So she told me the flight leaves at 5:30 tomorrow, don’t be late. Hoping to get some sympathy I explained that we left at 11 a.m this morning, but the embassy lost our passports. Told the same sob story I’m telling you now.  And the lady’s expression totally changed, she started whispering with her supervisor in German. She then turned to us and said that they can knock-off everyone’s change fees; almost cutting the $4000 in half. After that she apologized that she couldn’t take off the fare difference. I mean she just saved us $1800 and then apologized for it! They took care of us after that and we ate the $2200. (I’m looking to try and recoup that in small claims court when I get back so if anyone has any advice please shoot me an email!)

The next day one of the check in people recognized me and let me skip the long check in line and use the business class check in. Security was a breeze, shoes didn’t come off, laptops stayed in our bags and we were through in less than 30 minutes with no random screenings. Boarded the flight early because we had a small child and are riding comfortably now. Actually it’s 1 AM eastern time right now and I’m writing this paragraph 35,000 feet above Paris.

So in the end we paid the expected worst case scenario fee but saved the stress of making a 24 hour journey and splitting the family in half; probably the best case scenario after missing our original flight.

Why is Cox and Kings to blame? Well for one I can’t sue the Indian embassy and two they are the most disorganized office I’ve ever seen. They had a number ticketing system but weren’t using it properly and a random patron was actually keeping track and calling out numbers. All the customers in that room were bonding over how horrible the service was. But it goes beyond that. When they get a passport they don’t file it by name or date, nope they dumped them into a box. Literally, they dumped all the passports into a big cardboard box, with no way of knowing which is which. This created the black-hole where passports went, with no ability to identify them beyond opening each one and checking by hand. When passports are being moved back and forth between offices you are DEFINITELY going to lose track of a couple of them. The fact that this is has continuously been going on shows that they haven’t learned from their previous mistakes and don’t care enough to organize on even a most basic level.

Then we get into the fact these people don’t know basic citizenship laws of the United States. They failed to understand after repeated explanations that my sister was never an Indian citizen and was an American citizen by birth. Her application specifically stated that she was born in India but was an American citizen BY BIRTH. Neither that nor my parents’ citizenship certificates were enough to prove it until it was already too late. All of the applications were submitted at the same time but their disorganization and idiocy proved too much for any rational human being to conquer and we missed our flight.

So what should you make of this? Never go to India. It is easier, more time saving and cost effective for you to go to Japan, become a citizen and then go to India. Cox and Kings makes the MVA seem like the most well-oiled and customer oriented government agency in the world. I genuinely asked my Dad to bribe the officers to get the passports done. A $200 or even $500 bribe pales in comparison to the $2200 our new flights cost. But Cox and Kings and the Indian consulate are so disorganized we literally wouldn’t even know who to bribe and they’d probably lose the cash before they could spend it. I would rather jump out of this airplane, enjoy the 2 minute free fall from this altitude and subsequent splat on some French mountain than try to get an Indian visa while Cox and Kings are still in charge. And finally, if you need to go India, stowaway on a cargo ship, risk getting attacked by Somali pirates because even if you get caught, you’re still probably better off than dealing with Cox. At least the pirates will go away when you give them money.