Ni Dieu Ni Maitre

Started out with a 6 hour bus ride (one pit stop after 5 hours) meandering through rice paddies, small villages and cities and over the central hills, past elephant crossings on entirely 2 lane roads with the incessant crazy passing by the bus driver… traffic deaths are quite common, but not as frequent as in India.

Stayed the night in City Beds, where I stayed upon arrival in Colombo 3 months ago. Next morning in the pouring rain, off by tuk-tuk to the airport. The first mistake of a horrible day, as the airport turned out to be nearly 30km from the city, on bad roads… slow, wet and expensive. I had been under the impression that there had been a universal extension of tourist visas for two weeks… read it in the paper, and numerous Lankans in Uppuveli mentioned it as well. Imagine my surprise when I was informed at a customs check that it was necessary to travel to Colombo and visit Immigration to get this extension and I was fined $360 for overstaying my visa.

But things only got worse. After a long delay over the visa problem, I made my flight to Chennai, on the East coast of India to get a connecting flight to Guwahati, the largest city in Assam State, northeastern India. On the good side, these 2 flights with about six and a half hours in the air cost only $270. On the bad side were the delays in Chennai. First was a small paper form passed out on the plane, necessary to enter India along with my approved e-visa. Somehow, perhaps while cat napping on the first flight, I had not gotten this form, and the virago behind the visa desk refused to give me a second form after I made a mistake on the first one she gave me. She reduced the woman behind me to tears with her browbeating. Went to another line, got some more forms and finally got my visa stamped.

On to the baggage check, where everything went wrong. I had to go to the back of the line twice and my 2 pieces of baggage were selected for a thorough search. Here I lost a small pair of rounded tip scissors, and finally lost my Swiss army knife which, on this particular months long trip had made
it through US customs several times, Lankan, Indian, Thai and Korean customs as well. These delays caused me to rush to get my flight, missing a chance to get to an ATM and get Indian rupees. This turned out to be a disaster.

Continued…