DaBoss

It’s now Friday before the Monday of departure. I think I used the car for the last time today so tomorrow I’ll be setting things up in the garage. Curved supports go under the wheels to keep them from developing a flat spot and a battery minder will keep the small battery in the Prius in good condition. The traction battery should be OK but I may have to plan a semi-long drive when I get back to exercise it.

With eight days to go the packing is almost done. I had hoped to take one large and one small suitcase along with the camera bag and another smaller bag to hold the paperwork. It was close but did not happen. I had the laptop computer and its accessories along with other things in the small suitcase but it started to overflow so the messenger bag I’ll be taking on the India excursion came out and filled up leaving a few things still “needed” unpacked. How to solve?

Seventeen days to go. The final paperwork is now in hand after my passport was returned from the Indian Consulate in San Francisco with Visa inside. It seems I now have permission to enter India for tourism for the next ten years (but only less than 180 days at a time). Australia was an e-visa and Jordan’s will be obtained while on the ship through Princess.

It may seem odd to be writing about taxes in a blog devoted to a world cruise. But, when that cruise starts on 22 January and ends on 14 May you suddenly realize that you won’t be able to collect all the 1099s and other documents from the mail in order to have accurate information for the return. Plus, doing the return and filing by 15 April might be more than a little difficult.

Now that I have an eVisa for India in hand Princess has suggested getting a “real” visa for India as sometimes the eVisa causes problems entering the country. [sigh] So, the travel agent (Karla at Town & Country Travel) and I have been going back and forth for a few days now filling out paperwork for a visa service company to get the visa from the Consulate in San Francisco. If you have to do this be aware that the visa application must be filled out very specifically and have information in exactly the right place and order. A couple of tries and I can say to speed the process you should make a contact at whatever visa service company you use, send them a draft of the application by e-mail and get them to review it in detail before you actually print out the paperwork and physically get it to them. For India in particular, make certain you make note of the application number so then if you have to fill it out multiple times you can enter that and have at least most of the information pre-filled out for the next iteration. Please learn from our experience!