Landed in INDIA EP.02 | 250$ Fine and Immigration Process | Pakistani on Indian Tour
Here you can see all my luggage. You can also see all three of my bags there. Finally .... boarding time ... Welcome to India Assalam Alekum Everyone and Welcome Back to the Channel from UAE. I got here after finishing my Middle East tour.
I was in Oman when I found out that I had got the visa for India. You guys already know that I applied for the first time in 2020. Then I applied in 2022.
But unfortunately it was declined on both occasions. First time due to Covid.... And second time... due to some unknown reasons. As they say, third time's a charm.
Today we have the visa. We'll take the flight from Dubai and land in Kochi, Kerala. Our flight is at 9:45 pm. We have a lot of time before that.
And we'll try to make good use of our time by packing our luggage. As you saw in the previous vlog, my motorcycle has been shipped from Dubai. However, all the luggage on the motorcycle is still with me.
I wanted all of it to get shipped along with the motorcycle. But the shipping company wanted to avoid any customs related issues. That could result in some delay in clearance of the vehicle. So it was better to ship only the motorcycle.
And keep all the luggage with myself. Let me show you what I plan to do with my luggage. Here you can see all my luggage.
You can also see all three of my bags. And there's this box that contains all the stuff that I'm not carrying with me. For instance my camping gear that I'm not carrying to India. This one contains my helmet which is usually not allowed to keep in hand-carry.
So I thought to put it inside a carton. For this purpose, I have some cartons with me. And he's my neighbor from Nankana Sahib, Inam. He has his car with him. We are gonna try to place all this stuff in his car. Don't want all this stuff to be unpacked at the airport.
So we'll pack everything accordingly. Finally all done with our packing. Everything has been taken care of.
As you know I have the tendency to forget my motorcycle keys at times. So, someone suggested me to get the air tag from Apple. So, I got one from here. Salman here brought this from Amazon for us.
We are definitely gonna need this. This is the air tag. We need to somehow attach it with the motorcycle keys. Need to open this as well.
Anyways, we can take care of this later, Salman. Thank you very much. Getting it from Amazon was easier. Otherwise, we would have needed to find it in some shop. All our luggage has been taken care of.
I feel that it's easier to carry the luggage on a motorcycle as compared to an airplane. I had to sort and arrange everything accordingly. I did leave a few things behind. However, we'll need all of our bags. Right now, I'm leaving with Inam from Sharjah. As I told you previously in the video...
Getting a visa at this point in time was not pre-planned. I was told that the time gap between visa application and its approval is almost 4 months. I wanted to take a few months break after the Middle East tour. And by that time I would have received the visa. But out of the blue, I got an email about the visa approval while I was in Oman. The validity period for the visa starts right on the day it's issued.
However, the 30 day period of visa will start once you enter the territory. You have to enter the country within 30 days of issuance. And once you are there, you get a 30 day stay. Unfortunately, my Indian visa is for 30 days only.
And India is a huge country. One can hardly cover 1 to 2 percent in 30 days. Let's see what we can do once we get there.
Still 4 hours to go before our flight. So I thought to eat something before going to the airport. For that purpose, I didn't come to a Pakistani restaurant...
I've been eating Pakistani food for some time now. We are in an Afghani restaurant instead. We have boneless karrahi here. Along with that, we ordered the famous Kabuli pulao but it's not served yet. Hopefully it will arrive soon. Here it is...
Thank you. Looks delicious. It has raisins. Kabuli pulao always has raisins. I've just come to the office of ACE Luxury Immigration. I have with me Mr Lovdeep.
I wanted to introduce you all to him. And here's his wife, Shireen. And here's Mr. Sayed. So this is sort of an Indian-Pakistani company. Two of the partners are here.
You also have an office in Islamabad, Pakistan. That's run by Mr. Shahrukh. Tell us a bit about your company. We are lawyers who practice immigration law.
We have offices in Canada and Dubai. One of our offices is in Islamabad and we are gonna have one in Karachi soon. In India we have the Reagents and Satellite offices. Basically we are into Canadian immigration. And citizenship by investment, also known as second passport. We take care of all such cases.
We have employees from 13, 14 countries. It's a multi-cultural team. Around how many people work here? Around 60.
You can see everyone through my camera. He's from my city, Nankana Sahib. Mr Kamran. Let me clarify something regarding immigration. Those of you who have a settled business or a good work experience and want to settle in some other country with their families... These guys help those people to settle in countries like Canada etc.
But they don't handle queries related to student visas or normal visas. So, if you are interested in their services, you can find their link in the description of this video. We are finally at the airport.
Inam is the man behind the camera. Let me get my phone back from him and thank him for his help. Thanks Inam. Travel safe. We still have a long way to go.
Since camera is not allowed here, the next footage will be made by our phone. Our flight is at terminal 2. It's terminal 3 in fact. You can say that this is dedicated to Emirates flights. This is the luggage that we are carrying with us. Let me give you a glimpse.
We have one big carton and two bags. And this small bag is for hand-carry. Let's get it wrapped up from here. So as to add an extra layer of safety.
Yes, the Emirates guys are doing it here. Can you wrap my stuff? Why not... Wrap these together and that one separately. Will you do it here from that counter. Both are okay.
This one please. Wrapping is complete and now we have two units. This is a service by Emirates. We are charged 40 AED for this... which is like 11 USD.
It's quite expensive if you compare it from other places. The self check-in counters are on that side which are being used by a lot of people. One just needs to place their stuff there... Especially those who have done online check-in. However, there are some people appointed to assist you to check-in. We need to go to Area 4. We are done with the check-in and have handed over our luggage.
The 9:45 pm flight to Kochi will be at Gate B18. Our check-in had an interesting story that I'll share with you shortly. But before that, let's figure out how to get to B18 from here. There's a train service here as well but it only takes you to the A gates. Those of you who come to Dubai and have to get their VAT refunded... They can get it done from here after the security point.
We'll use this elevator to get to B18. We have found our gate. Still 2 hours and 15 minutes before the flight.
Rather than just waiting at the gate, we are at Costa for coffee. I have a cup of my favorite cappuccino. Let me share my check-in story with you. The maximum limit of check-in luggage was 25 kg.
I paid for extra 15 kg so the total luggage was 40 kg. That was my guess. But when my luggage was weighed, I was told that I need to pay another 820 AED. Let's listen to the Azaan.
Azaan has finished so lets resume the story. My luggage weighed 53 kg. And I thought it won't be more than 40 kg. We had taken care of 40 kg but the last 13 kg cost us 820 AED. That's almost 240 USD. It costs less when you do it online.
Anyways, it was a mistake in calculation on my part. Now I realize that even my tools weigh tens of kilograms. Then I have my riding shoes, helmet, jackets and protective gear. So, there are a number of items that I hadn't considered in calculations.
I do have a weighing balance at home. Here I didn't have that so I made a wild guess. And that wrong guess did cost us some extra money.
Lets stop worrying about this and enjoy this coffee. Let's hope that the next part of our journey turns out to be pleasant. It's boarding time finally. Apparently the flight will depart at the exact time.
Everything is happening as scheduled. Lets see how things turn out to be. The flight has landed. Let's see how the immigration procedure goes for us. This is the Kochi Airport. It's quite a big one. We had to fill the foreigners form here.
It's more like a little card where you have to fill in the required info. I have done that. Also put my hotel address in it. Looks like the bag of this gentleman has come undone. We are heading towards immigration now. Welcome to India Honestly I don't have words to share my excitement with you.
While I was at the immigration, I was praying that nothing should go wrong due to my origin. But the immigration guy was one of the nicest people. I'll share more details about it later. Right now we are passing through the duty free shops.
Let's go and collect our luggage. And then we'll see about the next part of our journey. You can see my excitement from my face. I don't think I need to explain the reason. We'll get our luggage here.
It's quite crowded as it was a big flight. I think a couple of other flights have landed as well. And the landing times almost coincided. For instance there were two other flights from Dubai. Let's see how much time do we have to spend here. Hopefully it won't take much time.
So the luggage is here and all the procedure took almost half an hour. We are almost free to go now. Let's get going, then.
I'm at the money exchange counter now as I don't have Indian currency. Nithin is trying to help me. I had some Omani riyals so I got 50 Omani riyals converted here. I'll get almost 10 thousand Indian rupees for that.
Because that's almost 120 - 125 USD. We'll get the money from here and then we'll find a taxi from this side. Nithin is now gonna give me 10 thousand INR. Thank you very much. Do I need to sign here? Yes.
So 9500 INR. Okay. So it's 9850 INR. Thank you very much. Appreciated.
Time to take a taxi now. I've seen these notes with the picture of Gandhi, for the first time. Honestly, I haven't seen the Indian currency before. Because I haven't been to India before. And neither did I see it from some Indian friend. These are 500 rupee notes. It's not that crowded anymore so hopefully it won't take more than 10 minutes.
After successfully getting a taxi booked, we are now leaving the airport. In fact, there's an ATM here and I could have withdrawn money from here using my credit card. But I didn't know it before so I got it from there. We'll have to locate our taxi now. This form is sort of a booking receipt for the taxi. For this we paid 15 USD or 1250 INR.
So this is our taxi and all our luggage has been placed in it. I actually went to the wrong side. India has the same hand drive as Pakistan. I have Bashir with me in the taxi.
Our ride is gonna be almost 30 km. He can speak a little Hindi and some English as well. It's dark outside so we can't see much for now. The whole procedure from immigration at the airport and finding a taxi was very smooth. Quite impressive actually. I mean, at some places you don't even know how to hire a taxi.
But here, it was like clockwork. Went very well. We landed around 3 am and by 4 am we are traveling in taxi. And hopefully we'll be in our hotel within the next half an hour. There was one little problem though when I booked a hotel from UAE. But that hotel sent me a message at a later stage that they were at capacity.
The booking went through due to some error in their system and had to be cancelled. So I had to book a hotel again. We have found our hotel. And right outside the hotel you can see these stalls of beautiful flowers. It's very early in the morning... Almost the time of Fajar prayer. And this is our hotel.
Let's go to our hotel now. We have checked-in to our hotel and this is our room. It's a nice room.
Really liked it in the first look. It's a small room but quite comfortable though. Here's the washroom and it looks quite decent as well. I mean exactly the same as they showed in pictures.
Sometimes, the hotels are nothing in comparison to the professional pictures they display in their ads. This one is quite impressive nonetheless. I paid 35 USD for a night here. I don't know much about the prices in India. We'll figure it out in the days to come as we travel here. Because when you go to a country, you have to show hotel booking at the immigration.
That's why it's important to get an online booking in advance. They did ask me about the hotel at immigration and I had to mention it in the small form too. My overall experience was really good. They didn't ask me too many questions. The interview lasted for 10 minutes only.
I mean... we all look the same... They asked me if I was Indian. I told them that I am not. Then they asked me if I was from Pakistan. I said yes I am. My passport had the name Nankana Sahib on it. I mean the place of birth on my German passport. Then they asked me a few minor questions.
They asked me about the itinerary. I told that I want to do a motorcycle ride from here to Delhi. Other than that, they didn't ask me anything worth mentioning. I guess that's just it. The questions were normal routine questions. I mean, had they asked any intriguing questions, it would have stayed in my mind.
And after that I was greeted by a 'Welcome to India'. I'll try my best to cover India to the best of my skills. I'm quite tired at the moment.
The traveling took the whole night. Let's take some rest before we go to pick our motorcycle in the next vlog. Let's hope that it also happens smoothly. Remember me in your prayers. Don't forget to Like, Subscribe and Share. Allah Hafiz
2023-04-06 08:21
