Do you ever get a feeling once in a while that some things are just not meant to be? Travelling to India and seeing the Taj Mahal has been something I have wanted to do for as a long as I can remember. One of those must do things in life that I'm sure everyone has a few of. I got very close to realising that dream in the early hours of this morning. Well I got as far as, Air Sahara's check-in desk at Bandaranaike International airport to be precise. It was at this point we were informed couldn't board the plane because we hadn't got a VISA to visit India.
Now I know to everyone who has been to India and probably to a lot of people who haven't will tell me it's obvious that you need a VISA to get into India. However, we were advised by the travel company who organised the trip, The Gabo Group that because we were Sri Lanka residents we didn't need one. I saw no reason to question this as many countries don't require a VISA to visit and many actually issue them on arrival. Now 12 months ago I would have completely lost it being stuck at airport at 01:00 in the morning having booked a holiday I now couldn't take. However, since living abroad I have become an older and wiser man, and so I just resigned myself to letting fate take its course ;-) Luckily we had a 24 hour help line that Gabo run and although the first person we spoke to was useless the second was extremely helpful, suggested that we could get a VISA today and catch a plane out to India later on. I shrugged my shoulders and accepted it. C'est la vie. This morning we went to the Gabo office where we had booked the trip and explained the problem. Am I mad at Gabo? Not at all. Well OK, just a bit ;-). Mistakes are made. They acknowledged they should have advised us we needed a VISA and were extremely helpful in remedying the situation. They found out for us that the Indian embassy was closed today so the trip was off this weekend. However, they gave us the forms to be filled in to apply for the VISA, agreed to re-emburse us for the extra taxi costs we had incured, and suggested we plan the holiday for the weekend of the 26th - 29th November. Now in my book this they have come good and I will use Gabo again, assuming the trip itself is a success. It gives me a lot of confidence that the company have the backup and experience to help us out if something does go wrong. OK, it should never have gone wrong in the first place but I always try and give people a second chance. Hey, I've made enough mistakes in my job and I like to think that when I too make a mistake the people I work with will allow me to put things right.
So the plans for the weekend of changed and as I said to my wife. Think positive. Today we'll have a lazy day drinking beer and playing cards, just chilling out on the balcony. Tomorrow we'll take the opportunity to see a few places in Colombo we haven't seen yet, on Sunday play some 10 pin bowling and perhaps on Monday we'll go to Dehiwala zoo.