Derailed?

These are stressful and urgent times here in Suit-land. Our perfect plans have been (potentially) waylaid by an Indian visa application process that is going to take way too long for our needs.

Essentially, we dropped off our applications on Thursday. Our flights to Mumbai leave next Wednesday, mid-day. They need one day to put a visa into our passports. That leaves us with essentially 2 1/2 days for processing, and they are suggesting that they need at least 5 days to get us our visas. The wedding is on Friday, our tickets are changeable, but not to any flights next week. Basically - if we don't (by some stroke of luck) get our visas by Tuesday of next week, the project is over. Done. Kaput. Poof!

The crazy thing is, the Indian government here has outsourced their visa processing to a third party external company. That company has to forward our documents to the consulate here, which then has to check our "status" with the Indian Embassy in the US. The process then reverses as everyone sends information backwards. That's three layers of info-passing, twice over. If I could get a hold of people in the Indian Consulate in HK and the Indian Embassy in the US, I think we might have a chance to speed things up - but if not... then odds are that the Suit may have to go on permanent hiatus. :(

I'm very sad, but still holding onto a glimmer of hope. Everything does indeed happen for a reason, and if for some reason we don't get the visas, then I'll just have to work at figuring out what that reason actually is. Keep your fingers crossed, and if anyone out there knows someone at the HK Indian Consulate or the US Indian Embassy - please put in a phone call, explain the situation, and help me get to the last wedding!!!!