Popagandhi

in the Singapore/Malaysia/United Arab Emirates context (i.e. the places where I’ve applied for an Indian visa)

Never forget: almost everybody needs a visa to India.

The default “tourist” visa you get (I say this as a Singapore citizen) is a 6-month multiple entry visa. It costs S$50 in Singapore.

Don’t go to the High Commissions to apply for your visa. In Singapore and Malaysia they have outsourced this to India Visa Centres and no longer accept visa applications unless for emergencies — in Singapore, Mustafa Centre Travel and Serangoon Travel are what I use, and in Malaysia it’s at the Straits Trading Building in KL. You pay a few dollars more but save yourself the insanity and the trouble of queuing up at the High Comm.

You can get an Indian visa in on day if it is an emergency if you go to the High Comm before 11 am on a weekday. You’ll get it in the evening. The cost is about S$100 extra.

You can get an Indian visa on the same day if it is a business visa. For that, you need a letter from an Indian company with its official letterhead, and a letter from a high-ranking person at your own company (also on a letterhead). It’s S$240 for 1 year, multiple entry, and S$400 for more than 1 year, up to 5 years. Variable pricing applies for citizens of other countries, if you’re not applying at the embassy of your home country (although you should be a legal resident). It also usually takes 5 or more working days to process a visa application if you are not a citizen of that country, even if you are a legal resident. You are also obliged to pay extra for “fax” fees to your home mission.

There are some newfangled rules they have just introduced that muddles all this. It’s meant to increase security, but it’s also increased hassle — now you are supposed to have a gap of two months between each visit. Although if you use India as a jumping off point to neighbouring countries (i.e. Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka… forget Pakistan) on a reasonable tourist schedule and timeframe, then the two-month rule is not supposed to apply.

Meanwhile, the groundbreaking, earth-shattering recent Indian law says tourist visas are now issued for citizens of FIVE countries, including Singapore. A great step, but still restrictive: 30 days only, and you cannot enter for another 2 months after too — it also costs more, and is issued at major Indian airports with the glaring exception of Bangalore.

If you’re a citizen of Pakistan or Afghanistan, or it’s clear you have links to these countries, and/or have visited with the same passport… good luck, and have a lot of patience and humour. It’ll be trying.

I have a passport filled with full-page Indian visas. I think this time I’m going to try for a five-year business visa. Which is another thing altogether.

(Sigh)

In 2005, a 20 year old newbie backpacker trudged through the Cambodian border at Aranyaprathet on foot and her first instinct was to reach for a stack of paper in her 65L backpack. Just to locate the section, “At the Poi Pet border… expect to pay extra for a Cambodian visa”, and additional instructions on how to bribe immigration officials, hitch a pick up truck, ride a shared taxi, or board a minibus to Siem Reap after clearing immigration. That was my first introduction to the world of crossing land borders. It was also the first of the series of month-long backpacking trips to come, the short regional jaunts that would come to define my time at university.

If I were to do it again today, knowing what I know now, and owning what I now own — an iPhone — things would have been simpler:

Travelfish.org has been my exclusive source of travel information in Southeast Asia since they opened for business. When I saw it for the first time, I told many friends that I would never buy another travel guidebook for Southeast Asia again. Five years on, many of them didn’t believe me, but that held true — the well-written online guide to many Southeast Asian countries is still free, and even better. Five or more years of travelling the region with Travelfish meant I’ve discovered many personal favourites through it. From the lovely cottages and wonderful food of Chiang Dao Nest, to the former Golden Triangle of Mae Salong, to the Gibbon Experience Project, and what smaller temples one should see other than the Angkor Wat itself, I mostly learned about them on Travelfish.

The first Travelfish iPhone app covers Angkor, or rather the town of Siem Reap and the nearby temples of the magnificent Angkor Wat. I’m a fan of both Cambodia and of the iPhone, and I continue to be fascinated by the direction travel seems to be going with all the possibilities on smart mobile computing devices like the iPhone. While there are many apps that help travellers find out where they are and how to get there and when (GPS apps, travel itinerary apps like TripIt’s, apps to find restaurants nearby), I’m more interested in where I should go, and why. A combination of Travelfish’s good writing and the intuitive nature of a well-designed iPhone app, I thought at some point, would be a breakthrough. So when Stuart announced the launch of their first ever iPhone app, Angkor, I jumped on the opportunity to review it.

Weighing in at a reasonable 43.6 MB, the app works great offline — which is a huge plus for travellers on the go without connectivity. The menu is laid out in 8 clear sections, in large icons. Tap on any of those icons, and that’s where it gets interesting. The app is locked in landscape mode, which suits the way they’ve thought about user experience. You drag your finger to the left and right of a series of flash cards in each section: overview, map, district, type of hotel/restaurant/activity. I’m particularly excited by the fact that maps work great offline and get even better with connectivity. I don’t always have data on my phone when I travel, but wifi spots are easily located. I can think of plenty of ways in which the maps feature could change the way I travel. Instead of using Google Maps and having to input the address of where I’m going (always a chore because address formats and spelling is so frequently frustrating in this part of the world, or in a language you can’t write), with data access I can simply locate myself on the inbuilt map that’s pre-populated with Travelfish-recommended hotels, bars, restaurants, and also with useful spots like transport locations. The filters let you turn on and off each category of landmarks on the map — again, very useful. The four walking tours suggested in the app are also marked out on the map, and you can turn any of them on or off. I can see how useful it would be if I were walking around Angkor Thom, needed to see what the nearest temple to drive to was, and whether it was worth making a detour: I can simply locate myself, tap any of the nearby pins and read all about them.

Other sections are Background, Sleep, Eat and Meet, See and Do, Transport, Walking tours and Photos. Having been to Angkor/Siem Reap several times, I’m familiar enough with the area to say the recommendations and reviews are spot-on, and the writing a joy to read. More importantly, at US$7.99, it’s a steal for all that valuable information — and for the pleasurable experience of using such a well-designed, well-written app. Download now. Leave the guidebook at home. There’s another one for Koh Samet as well (in case you’re in Bangkok and planning an island getaway). I truly believe they’ve set the bar for travel guides on the go.

Yemen is all over the news these days for all the wrong reasons. Those of you interested in that sort of thing would do well to read Waq al-Waq as a necessary companion blog to Western reporting on Yemen, which does tend to come across as uninformed and inaccurate most of the time.

I still miss that country greatly and think constantly about what a wonderful experience it was, to have had the chance to see it. Here are some of the beautiful people I met.

Slides from my barcamp presentation:

When M. and I both got the chance to move abroad and start new, but separate (if temporary) lives, we started Fortylove.tv to make the best out of two exciting but disparate cities: London, Dubai. Both are cosmopolitan cities. One had a long history, remarkable culture, and was a major world city. Another was desert until 20 years ago, yet rose convincingly from the sand to try to be a major world city. Both, quite notably, had made it simple — and cheap — to gain access to the countries in their respective regions through their low cost carriers. We saw in this an opportunity to go, as my father would say, gallivanting around Europe, the Middle East and India; sometimes together, mostly on our own. We’re talking about US$10 return tickets to Barcelona, US$100 tickets to Istanbul and Sana’a, and that’s after picking from the very difficult list of places like Paris, Valencia, Fez, Marseille, Brussels (for her); Athens, Casablanca, Beirut, Damascus, Cairo, and more, for me.

Ryanair, Easyjet, flydubai, AirArabia, and the like, really did for us in those parts of the world what AirAsia did for us here.

Another little known reason why we started Fortylove.tv: it was our excuse to travel more, do more silly things, meet (and befriend) interesting people. I was particularly interested in making the effort to get the most out of my Dubai experience. That sounds simple enough, but in reality it was quite difficult. In a city like that it was too easy to be immersed in working, partying, and… more working and partying. Many people move to Dubai with the idea that they will see more of the Middle East. Many of them never get around to doing it; it’s too easy to just stay put in the city of fast cars, bright lights, gleaming towers. The fast cars, gaudy architecture and bright lights did nothing for me except make me feel sick. I did not like Dubai very much; I still don’t. I needed to discover the real, gritty bits of a city that wasn’t trying to be something else. I found that in the back streets of Deira and Bur Dubai, in neighbouring Abu Dhabi; in the Friday khushti wrestling matches at the fish market and the freshly baked Afghan breads, in the camel races on weekends. And in the haunting strains of Middle Eastern hiphop.

I went in search of Middle Eastern hiphop but came away wanting to know more about the deeper issues behind their music. It was political, yes, but intense, raw, and ultimately touching. It was very, very good (check out DAM Palestine and The Narcicyst for a start, if you’re interested). The pressing issues weren’t about sex, women, guns or bling, but about ideas such as identity, ‘homelessness’, displacement, exile, war, oppression. Whether or not you agree with their message (a pertinent one that cannot be ignored any longer), it’s still good music.

While seeking out Dubai-based group Diligent Thought, I came across one of their sisters, a Sudan-born, Dubai-raised poet and musician who performs by the alias of Miss Lyrikal Nuisance. That we worked in the same media hub area meant we became fast friends and I learned a lot about life, the world, and that particular region, from her. I took her to the historic conservation area of Bastakiyah (a must, if you’re ever in Dubai) and got her to perform for me. There’s music by The Narcicyst, the Iraqi-Candian Dubai-based performer, as well. You can read more about it here (as well as watch the video), or just watch the video:

If you’d rather watch the YouTube version, it’s here.