You might remember that Sophie and I returned to the US not only because we were exhausted and had gone just far enough past the edge of sanity that we had named our luggage, cameras, and hairbrush, but also because we needed to facilitate getting visas to India. Just before arriving in Turkey, we discovered that our original plan to apply for visas at the Indian consulate in Istanbul would’ve led to us being denied and redirected to the embassy in Ankara. Which in turn would’ve led us to spend a week in a town the tourist highlight of which is something called the Monument to a Secure and Confident Future. So we opted to go home and get them the good ol’ ‘MERican way.

Despite the fact that India has a track record of changing their visa requirements whenever a tourist misses a waste basket with their empty Fanta can — the government had weeks earlier decided that any visitor who leaves India can’t come back for two months, effectively killing our plans for side trips to Nepal or Sri Lanka — it seemed like the process  would be easy enough. If nothing else, there was plenty of information online, because the Indian embassy in America outsources all of their visa processing to a third-party company called Travisa. Travisa seems to be sort of the Cash4Gold of consular documentation. “Just mail us your passports and bank account numbers and power of attorney documents and in — DON’T READ THEM — and in 7-10 days we’ll mail you a visa! Honest!”¹

Even better, Travisa offers a same-day turnaround service. If you make an appointment at their New York office and show up with your passport and completed application and without any sharp objects, suitcases, backpacks, cell phones, iPods, sealed envelopes, food items, or Pakistanis, you can walk out with a visa that evening. This seemed like the perfect strategy. Sophie and I would spend a couple of days in New York, get the visa issues taken care of quickly, then move on to the relaxin’. From our hotel room in Istanbul we booked our flights to New York, reserved our hotels, bought our onward tickets on to Pittsburgh, and made our Travisa appointments on their Web site. Then we finished reading to the bottom of the page.

The page bottom told us, with undisguised smugness, that one of the requirements for a visa is proof of address — a government-issued photo ID or a major utility bill. Unfortunately, we are unemployed, homeless drifters who are using my mother’s address to receive mail. Even worse, we are unemployed, homeless drifters who had not been smart enough to get new drivers licenses after moving out of New York. So we had none of those things.

“Surely a bank statement, cell phone bill, or credit card statement must be accepted,” Sophie said.

“Cell phone bills, credit card statements, and bank statements are not accepted,” the bottom of the page responded, glaring at us over the nose of its reading glasses.

So there went that plan. We had no hope of obtaining proof of address before we arrived in New York. Our only option was to abandon the same-day turnaround and instead get drivers licenses when we arrived in Pittsburgh, and then apply for the visas by mail. The plan was fraught with perils, but there was nothing else to be done. We agreed to give it a shot. The page bottom snorted and fixed itself a martini.

Such perils broke down thusly. We were scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh late Thursday afternoon 1/14, and then leave again for Turkey early on Wednesday 1/27. Travisa claimed the mail in process took five business days from the date they receive applications. Add to that two days of back-and-forth shipping time. Doing the math:

1. Thursday 1/14: Arrive in Pittsburgh late afternoon
2. Friday 1/15: Get drivers licenses, overnight applications to Travisa
3. Monday 1/18: Applications arrive at Travisa
4. Monday 1/25: Travisa ships passports and visas
5. Tuesday 1/26: Passports and visas arrive to us
6. Wednesday 1/27: Board plane for Istanbul, use new razor-sharp visas to foil underpants bombers

Add to the above the fact that the DMV would be closed 1/16 through 1/18 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, meaning that if we messed up getting the licenses on Friday it would completely kill our chances of getting our passports back in time. Add to THAT the fact that the Indian consulate would be closed Tuesday 1/26 for Republic Day, meaning that even a single day’s delay in shipping or processing would completely kill our chances of getting our passports back in time. We were cutting it close. To use a football metaphor, we needed to perfectly steam that tamale or we’d have giant piles of shit thrown at us by wild monkeys.

Nevertheless, we arrived in Pittsburgh borne by the confidence that comes from ignoring the fact that the plan was doomed from the start because we couldn’t actually get Pennsylvania drivers licenses anyway. See, to obtain a license — which we wanted to use as proof of address–we knew we’d be required to provide proof of address. And Pennsylvania wants all the same kinds of proof of address that India wanted and that we didn’t have. Foiled by our own dereliction!

Luckily, previous experience had by now taught me that it could sometimes be useful to continue reading to the bottom of the page. And at the very bottom of the PA drivers license application, I saw the loophole that would save us: unlike the Indian consulate, Pennsylvania accepts a signed lease as proof of address. Ah-ha! I simply had to purchase and download a lease agreement form and have my mother formerly rent me the room in her house that Sophie and I would be sleeping in. Simple and quite possibly legal! This perfect plan became even simpler when my stepbrother, who’s in the real estate business, happened to have a PDF of a lease form that he could give me.²

Armed with our mostly-not-fraudulent lease, I lay in bed in the wee hours of Friday morning going over the details of my perfect plan. I decided to double-check some facts on the Travisa site, so I grabbed my iPhone off of the night stand and surfed over. The dark bedroom was suddenly illuminated with the eerie glow of this message, pasted in an orange rectangle on the Travisa home page:

Update! 5:58pm ET, Thursday 1/17: All visa applicants must now include photocopies of their birth certificate or school diploma.

The wild monkeys started throwing shit.

TO BE CONTINUED….

1. This reminds me that Cash4Gold once inspired a fit of extreme didacticism in me and my friend Chris P. during which we devised a plan involving a series of TV ads telling people to send us a their gold for cash. We would then mail anyone who responded a dollar and a map to a spot in the Nevada desert where we had buried their jewelry. [↩]
2. Honestly I only include that detail because I want to mention that my stepbrother, having been a landlord, has fantastic stories about the incredible lengths tenants will go to to avoid paying rent, including one particular freeloader who claimed that he left the rent money sitting on the kitchen table only to have it suddenly eaten by a passing turtle. [↩]