Karma is a ...

real pain in my ass. Who knows whether we're storing up good karma for the future or paying back something we did in the past (or in a past life!), but our relaxing mountain adventure has seemingly been anything but. I don't mean to be hyperbolic -- believe me, the beautiful mountain views and the COOL BREEZE alone make this trip feel worth it -- but, we're incredibly disappointed with how it feels like this trip is slowly spinning into a tailspin despite us having booked this trip through an agency intentionally to avoid these types of pitfalls.

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To be fair, we were warned before hand that Sikkim, while a developing tourist destination, doesn't have the same infrastructure for tourists that say Rajasthan has ... but we assumed that meant amenities at the hotels like fancy furnishings ... not say, the hotel not knowing that we were scheduled to stay there ... or not say, drivers being only contractually obligated to drop us off at the 4 or 5 sights they were scheduled to go to rather than actually being able to tell us what they are... or not say, feeling like we're just cash cows for the tour operator's cousin-brothers who own and operate all the hotels we're staying at ... or (most importantly) not say, no one seemingly having any freaking clue how to get our permits for the outreaches of Sikkim!!!

Sikkim is wedged between the Nepali and Tibetan borders; and especially considering how contested the Tibetan border is with China, India has a vested interest in making sure that not every Joe-shmo is allowed up there without having a good reason to do so*. This is where our permits come in. The agency assured us before we left that even though they couldn't get our permits in advance anymore (more fallout from the David Headly affair), that it should not be a problem once we got here.

HA!

The reality is that it doesn't seem clear that anyone has any idea what is require for these permits. Our driver (as we were coming in from West Bengal) just dropped us off at the border in order to get our Inner Line permit; he didn't know where the office was, he figured it was near the building where the border police were hanging out. Luckily, deserted tourist must wander around there often because someone kindly pointed us up the hill to the Tourist Office and then to the local police station to register at the Foreign Resident Registration Office. We then wasted two days in Kalimpong in West Bengal (seriously, it is pretty town, but we didn't need to spend two nights there), only to get to Gangtok -- the capital of Sikkim, where you get your permits for the rest of Sikkim -- ON THE WEEKEND! None of the permit offices were open! How did the tour agency, that ostensibly planned our itinerary fail to recognize this flaw in their plan? So we're in Gangtok now, for an extra day because of their poor planning, but to add insult to injury they keep asking us for more documents ... first they need passport photos, then they need copies of our passports, then they need a copy of our Inner Line permit, no wait, on second thought they need the actual permit, oh, and actually, we need your actual passports to show them... Just one thing after another. Do these guys have any idea what is required to submit these permit applications? Or are they literally doing it for the first time?

So we've basically wasted the better part of four days waiting around in hotels -- with our time broken up by drivers dropping us off (literally) at local monasteries** ... but it isn't like I could make use of that time by writing you all blog posts about how beautiful the scenery is or how amazing momos are because ... (wait for it) our netbook is broken again!!!

I know!

It is the same "disease" that it had in Mussoorie, where it will make a clicking noise, freeze, and then blue screen of death. So no picture uploading, not after my last experience in an internet cafe up here, at least until we get back to Delhi. (sigh). For anyone that cares about these types of things, I'm pretty convinced now that this is a hardware issue for a number of reasons:
(a) the clicking popping sound, (b) that it seems as if the computer forgets where the operating system is on the C: drive, (c) that it only seems to happen at altitudes higher than 1200 m. That's why I think it worked just fine when I got to Bangalore (920m) and not Mussoorie (2000m) ... and why it seemed to be working fine in Kalimpong (1250m) and not Gangtok (1400m - 1700m). Has anyone heard before of hardware getting elevation sickness?

(sigh)

So needless to say ... although we are really digging on the mountain views, the fabulous momos, and hanging around Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries watching young monks play ... we're feeling a little stressed about our adventure. LOL ... we were really looking forward to our last weeks in India being on auto-pilot ... just to have an India-lite experience*** ... so much for that.

Best laid plans, right?

But who knows? Why not be optimistic about all the good karma we must be building up? Bodes well for the end of the trip, when we'll be doing a trek in Darjeeling ... or maybe for all the crazy adventures we'll have this summer visiting friends and family all over Europe and the US****
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* Although, you gotta question how effective this system of permits is when everything is done by hand in ledgers that are just kept at their various offices, not say, shared with the police ... for example.
** Which to be fair, are pretty awesome
*** To be fair, Sikkim totally is India-lite in the sense that, the streets are clean, there are no open sewers, private businesses personally choose to limit smoking in their establishments, there are NO BEGGARS, no one hassles us for tips or for "just looking" in their stores, and generally it is just more pleasant.
**** Which we are TOTALLY pumped about!!!

Goodbye Scooty ... Hope you're off to that big parking lot in the sky

Don't worry, neither of us was in an accident, rather our scooter was a tragic casualty of over-zealous bureaucracy ...

I'm sure you remember our Neverending Story post, well the story has finally ended with us needing to resell our scooter back to the store we bought it from. Apparently, word from up above was that there is a new policy by which foreigners are not allowed to own property in India ... and somehow the scooter qualifies as property ... and so we would never be able to register it in our name (more on this below), so no scooter for us. To add insult to injury, we couldn't then sell the scooter to a friend who would at least let us rent it for our last two months in Lucknow ... because in order to sell it we would have had to have registered it.

So we had to sell it back to the store we purchased the it from .... who really, in all honesty, should never have sold it to us in the first place. Obviously we took a loss on the purchase price, which ended up being equivalent to having rented it for 100 rupees a day.

Allen made a valiant effort ... he bargained and haggled, he threatened and harassed, he called and came in person, he even pulled out some big guns by bringing one of his teachers with him to negotiate... but in the end there was no legal way for us to hold on to this scooter for the remainder of our time in Lucknow.

I don't think the full impact of the loss of the scooter has really hit either of us yet --- but the burden will definitely fall heaviest on me, since it was my primary mode of transportation. With summer heat rapidly approaching (it is forecast to be 90 degrees today) ... there is no way I can cross town for appointments in an open air rickshaw (or a bicycle!) during the hours of 10 to 5pm .... which is effectively the entire day. I definitely won't be able to take my Hindi lessons with the institute or with my tutor anymore, which bums me out because I really love my tutor (a lovely retired teacher who made me feel like I was part of an old-lady's-club).

I'm bummed and I know Allen is bummed... but even in hindsight, would we have made different decisions? Should we have just bribed someone like one friend we know...? Should we have gotten a neighbor to register it for them like one friend we know...? Or should we have just bought a scooter that had been registered three owners ago like another friend we know...? We thought we were taking the legal route and that obviously failed.

But this is just one policy in a string of policies that have come out since last fall that are basically saying saying to foreigners "You're not welcome."

First came the rule that foreigners could not be hired unless no Indian candidate could be found. For several friends in the NGO industry, this has prevented them from returning to their livelihoods in India.

Then came the rule that visitors on a tourist visa have to stay out of the country at least 2 months before returning. Let me explain this: previously, although you may have had a 10 year tourist visa you were still obliged to leave the country after 6 months. Most long term foreign residents in India would just pop up to Nepal for a weekend and then come back down for another 6 months. Regardless of the wisdom of the original policy it most definitely encouraged long term residence of ex-pats. The new two month rule definitely discourages them, but it also discourages travelers who were not planning on staying indefinitely but may only have been using India as a stable base in the region.

I've heard of similar policies (particularly regarding work permits) in other countries. India is a country with staggering unemployment - it makes sense that the State would want to see their citizens hired first. I even see some of the logic of changing the visa requirements.

What I can't understand is why these rules are being applied inconsistently. It wasn't as if we were prevented from buying and driving the scooter in October. There was no document, law, or website that we could do research on this rule.... that we even knew this would be a problem for us. Hell, the scooter store was dragging Allen back and forth to the RTO office for MONTHS when this simply could have been "No, this isn't allowed" from the start. We only found out that this was the RTO's final decision from the scooter store.... probably from their "inside guy"

What does that even mean!?


.... (grumble)

The loss of the scooter was a real blow, but the nearly inexplicable reason for why this should be so difficult is going to sting for a while.

The Neverending Story

Seeing this post by our friend Nandan about the difficulties he had obtaining a driving license in India reminded me that I haven't caught you up to speed on the interminable hell it has been for us to register our scooter.

It all started off innocently enough. We bought the scooter and the store said they would have no problem registering it for us, that our US documents (drivers licenses, passports, Foreign Resident Registration Office forms) would be enough to get the car* registered.

But it wasn't that simple. They (the powers that be) didn't like our documents and didn't know what the FRRO was** and therefore this didn't qualify as proper "proof" that we were legitimate.

Maybe it was just our dumb luck that we were trying, as foreign nationals, to register this Indian scooter just as all the David Headley mess was blowing up in October 2009. Maybe a government already slightly suspicious of long-term-stay foreigners was just more paranoid now...

We don't know, but the end result as been about 13 trips (30 mins each way) for Allen to the Regional Transportation Office to spend hours on end waiting to speak with the baraa admi (big man), only to then be told that he didn't have the right form filled out, that he would have to apply for an Indian driver's license, but then they would reject that, but maybe our new international driver's license would count, but now our other paperwork was out of date and our proof of residence needs to be updated, but now the baraa admi is on vacation and we'll have to wait another week for him to come back, but now that he's back he's changed his mind ... and actually since you are leaving for the summer for 3 months we shouldn't register the car now, wait until you come back to register it.

Did I just hear you correctly, mister government man, did you actually just recommend to us that we continue to drive an unregistered car until May then wait until September (nearly a year since we first bought the car) to finally register the damned thing? We can no longer park in attended parking lots because they don't want to allow unregistered vehicles in for security reasons (understandably, but annoyingly nonetheless) ... and what if we get stopped by the cops, who would have no problem ticketing us for something they have legitimate right to do ... ie, not registering our car!

Whose liability is it then if it is stolen? Mr. Police officer can you please find our car with no license plate?

Whose liability is it if something incredibly insane happens to it while it is stolen?

And you, Mr. Baraa Admi are OK with sending us off back onto the road like this?

So Allen spent upwards of 50 hours of his life at this stupid office just so you could say 5 months later that you are unwilling to register this car for no better reason than that we won't be driving it for three months in 3 1/2 months from NOW!

Really?

Well, we're not OK with the situation ... And as the scooter was my primary mode of transportation, I've given Allen the OK to lay down the gauntlet and up the anti with the TVS (scooter brand) store: if they don't register our scooter (which they were suppose to do for us, like they do for every other customer), we will demand a full refund or we will sue them for improperly selling us the car in the first place.

By our reasoning is that technically it is their fault that we have the scooter in the first place - buyer beware, bullshit! If it wasn't for them not actually checking us out properly, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Yes, we were naive enough to trust them when they said "Yes, yes, sir, we will register the vehicle ... one week!" ... but we didn't have any reason to suspect there would be a problem since several of our other foreign friends have registered vehicles without too much difficulty.

What we have on our hands is a full blown clusterf*ck break down of authority ... I recommend you read Nandan's post I mentioned earlier for another example of this ... where someone is itching for a bribe and it isn't being spelled out to us. Although, in all fairness to Allen, who has definitely dealt with the full brunt of this bullshit ... he would have happily greased the wheels to get things done quicker if it wasn't for the fact that every time he talks to someone important there are like between six or twenty other people in the room - all staring at him and hanging on every word that comes out of his mouth.

I'm sad to think that we need to get rid of the scooter - but on the balance, the benefit I get from having it in no way outweighs the burden that Allen has had to face dealing with all this insane bureaucracy. Fine, if you don't want us to have the scooter (or seem content to let us drive it illegally) then we want our money back.

Allen is telling me over my shoulder that if this doesn't get resolved soon he's going to start bad-mouthing TVS on the internet as much as he can.... this is getting serious folks.
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* Another name for scooter here is car

**This never ceases to amaze me - one aspect of the town's government doesn't know of, hasn't heard of, does not recognize the authority of another government agency.

What is in a name?

Some of you have invariably heard of the nonsense that I'm going through trying to change my name...
Long story short: I don't go by the name I was given - which has caused me endless embarrassment when people don't know what to call me and then trying to explain what my name is and where it comes from ("But how do you get Nikki from Mari?" -- good question)

I had thought getting my name changed as a result of marriage would be a breeze: which in all honesty it would have, if I had only wanted to change my last name. Three name change was not in the cards for me. Why?
Because I got married in a state other than the one I live in. New York (being the unique state that it is) allows you to change your name on your marriage license. North Carolina does not.

The end result being that because my NC marriage license does not have the name I want printed on it, I can only use it to change my last name .... to change all my names I need a court order.

Brooklyn County Courthouse is like the DMV squared.
Before even starting the process I had to bring:
An original birth certificate, the marriage license, a notarized order for name change, a notarized spousal consent form (oh yes! They went there), and I was told I had to bring Allen with me.... (when we got there they just said they needed his ID - but all the other ladies changing their names had brought their significant others, which leads me to believe someone says that bull to make the whole process harder)

I spent 7 hours of my life there on Friday moving from one floor to another:
"Go to the 9th floor, get those forms stamped, then go to the 3rd floor and pay the cashier $65, then go back to the 9th floor to certify you've paid, then go to the 11th floor to have a judge hear your case, have those forms approved, then go back to the 9th floor, and certify that everything was done correctly, now notify the Department of Homeland Security by certified mail and pay $50 for the court order to be printed in a Brooklyn paper, bring back the proof of those actions to the 9th floor and then (and only then!) will you have officially changed your name.

So I still have a very long way to go in the process --- and am kicking myself daily for not having figured all this crap out sooner --- but I'm almost there folks!