Well, after almost 3 months (minus our two weeks in Nepal), it had finally come to the time for us to exit India. What an eventful time we had there! A rollercoaster experience you could say....love India, hate India, love the people, find them frustrating, relaxing, STRESSFUL! India brings out all the emotions!
You will know from our early blogs that we had a “special” visa which required us to register at the foreign registry office (FRO) and we have already shared how that experience went in Delhi! On re-entering India from Nepal we were required again to report to the FRO and we dutifully did so in Darjeeling. It was a rather comical experience when we did and a government official, sitting in front of a backdrop of centuries worth of ancient ledgers told us that it was better for us to report to the FRO in Kolkota instead ... which i think meant “if I register you here that will mean I have to actually work out what to do with your passport and it would really be much easier for me if you just went somewhere else”. After experiencing the FRO in a big city already we were VERY keen to avoid that again and definitely preferred sorting out our registration in a small quiet FRO with no queues (like the one in Darjeeling funny enough!). After gently affirming that we definitely wanted to register in Darjeeling the official asked us what the Indian Special Permission stamp in our passport meant – ehh isn't that your specialty sir?! Anyway, eventually he registered us (filling in th paperwork using his typewriter) and told us that we needed to report to the FRO in every place we visited from now until exiting India, we said 'no problem', walked out, looked at each other and said “no way!”. So we didn't and hoped it wouldn't cause us any problems when exiting India...we were fairly confident that we would be ok, since our registration was lodged in one of those ledgers which once full seemed to exist solely to gather dust....
On reaching the airport to leave India we faced TWELVE security checks between entering the terminal and entering the plane! Needless to say, as we went through each check (having our seat number scored off a sheet...move to next check...official writes seat number down on page...move to next check....official looks at ticket...move to next check....official ticks seat number off on list...move to next check etc etc...) no mention was made at all about the FRO and we breathed a wee sigh of relief – imagine if we had actually gone and spent the best part of a day in EVERY place we had gone to after Darjeeling registering at the FRO's we'd have been raging!
When we finally reached our gate we were told to sit down. Explaining we wanted to do some shopping the airline official said “ok you give me boarding pass then shopping” eh....ok?! Twelve security checks then you're told to hand your boarding pass over to an airline official who then simply has to trust you when you come back to retrieve your ticket from the handful of about 50 tickets and say “that's mine there”!
A very Indian exit!
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