This is about my one day trip to mumbai for my visa interview and
this also my first ride in plane. Beware the post might be
lengthy I will try to be concise in future.
Little backstory:
I
am one of students who was selected for student exchange program in
university of luxembourg which is one month away from now. And for past
few months, I had nice travel workout , mainly for visa paper works. I
had to go back and forth between busiest routes(chennai-coimbatore )
weekly. After completing all the paper works , finally I had to face
this visa interview in mumbai. My counter-parts to lumxembourg had
completed interview a week earlier and I had a delay which is mainly due
to PCC(police clearance certificate). After getting passport in
tatkaal , I did a mistake in hurry by applying PCC before post police
verification which lead to 2nd police verification. After daily 7 day
visits to commissioner office, I finally nailed the PCC.(but 2 weeks later)...:)
Trip
I
am called for interview at 2 am in belgium embassy in mumbai. I started
7 am in morning in kamaraj domestic terminal,chennai and reached by 9
at mumbai. The weather seemed very cloudy and I suspected to have heavy
rain. On reaching worli by cab from airport, I had to pass time till 2
pm. I had a hot
idli-sambar in an south indian restaurant. And my friends told that there is an famous
Siddhivinayak temple in worli. I wanted give a try despite my language barrier. I asked few south indian people in restaurant for the location of temple. I somehow managed to get the location and its three stops away.
Stroll:
After
15 minutes stroll amidst little rain, I reached the temple. I had great
view of the temple. And by 11 ,I left the temple not knowing where to
go. Then after roaming the streets and found a nice street bench to sit.
Then after few minutes an old man came and sat beside me. I noticed
Daily Thanthi , popular
tamil newspaper with him. I took a guess and asked him whether he is
tamilian. And my guess was correct, he had been mumbai since 1960's and
we had a little chat about mumbai weather. Within few minutes our talk
was interrupted by phone call from travel agent from mumbai who is
waiting for me near embassy. I shook hands with old man and rushed to
embassy and he gave instructions about the interview.
Sea-link ride:
After having a nice lunch in
Udipi
,famous south indian restaurant , I had my interview which lasted only
5-10 minutes. Actually I thought of having sea link ride ,which by the
way I missed in the morning. Now I desperately wanted that ride. So I
took a taxi and told the driver to go via sea link to the airport. My
first ride in a suspension bridge was amazing eventhough sea was little
rough due to monsoon. Even though speed limit was 50kmph , most of
vehicles raced above 50kmph .when I checked the taxi speedometer it was
around 100kmph !. After such a speedy ride , taxi moved at a snail pace
in traffic after crossing sea link. Actually both routes to airport
took same time for me.
Chennai Bird-eye view:
I
reached airport around 3 and the flight departs only at six O'clock. So
till then I browsed high speed airport Wifi in my laptop. During the
return flight ,I am lucky to get window seat. The night view of chennai
from 28,000ft was breathtaking. Finally awesome journey came to end by 8
O'clock. Then I reached home by 9.30 in usual chennai traffic.
