Getting the visa seemed to me not that problematic as it turned out to be.
We applied for an employment/intern visa as this was the recommended approach for us – we got some good invitations from the NGO we wanted to work for.
For end of January we received an invitation to the Indian embassy – which ended up – in short words – humiliating. We were treated like trash begging to work in India for no money (btw. after letting us wait for 45 minutes even we had an appointment – then interviewing at the corridor) . Here some of the crazy arguments the officer from the Indian embassy told to us:
- Why don’t you rather go to Somalia for help?
- This is a very small organisation – there is no sense for you to go there.
- Don’t you think, India has enough IT experts to do all the work you are planning to do?
- The description in the invitation is far too simple – it should be much more detailed with proper plan what exactly to do.
- But even though you would describe more – aargh – this would not help either as you are over qualified for the job.
- You are such a high qualified expert – why do you waste your time out there in the rural area?
- We would be rather very happy to provide to you a multi entry tourist visa to visit all your friends.
We took the last advice and thought about it – the first idea obviously was „F… off! If you don’t want us there, we find good other places.“. But after sleeping over – we gave it a chance and this is how we gonna start.
Just going there as tourists – visit the friends – visit some NGOs – but no official work. It’s gonna be fine anyway. We are excited about this and preparing for the flights now.
And here the invitations we had – for me they looked good:
