Visa for India
 

We are planning a trip from Canada to India and the Maldives for fall 2013.We are planning on flying into( and return from )Delhi on a business class (points) ticket,but before we do our travelling in India we want to transit the same day we arrive in Delhi on a separate ticket ( via Columbo,Sri Lanka) to the Maldives for a week,then return to Delhi to start our India trip for three more weeks.Will we have a visa issue if we obtain a multiple entry visa for India?

If you are not planning to leave the airport on that transit day you can easily manage with a single entry visa. For some reason no official person wants to admit this is standard practice, although everyone we asked (I was also skeptical) said it was no problem (but don't quote them!).

We did that just last year with an 8 hour connection to Nepal. We were met at the door of the incoming aircraft by a nice young woman who took care of all the hassles for us and another party.

If you leave the airport on your transit day, your visa will be stamped "no re-rentry for 60 days" (or maybe it's 90?). So be careful about this. India has an unusual policy about re-entering the country within a certain amount of time.

Thanks nofly and Kathie for your informative replies.Hopefully,we will be able to make the connection without having to leave the airport and clear immigration.Not sure yet what we will do if we can't make this work.I posed this question for the very reason of the strange re-entry policy in India I had read about that you mentioned Kathie in your post.

I should add that the young woman worked for the airline. She took our boarding passes, passports, and baggage tag receipts and went outside security to retrieve all our bags and take them to the check in counter for our continuing airlines, checked us in and obtained new boarding passes. She then returned to us with the new items. This was all to avoid having to go through immigration and customs and thereby not technically entering India.

My husband had a bit of trouble in January 2012. We were in Bangalore for a month and he has a ten-year multiple entry visa. We decided to take a short trip to Sri Lanka for four days and we asked the travel agent if he would have trouble getting back in. The travel agent said no. He said the purpose of the rule is to prevent yoga-practitioners from coming to India to do yoga and start yoga schools and whatnot and not to bother people like us.

He was wrong. On our way back in to Bangalore from Sri Lanka, immigration did not want to let my husband back in. Luckily we had an IPAD and were able to pull up proof that we were planning to leave India a few days later and that we had arrived only three weeks earlier. Further, the official was from the same neighborhood as my mother in Mysore and I was able to sweet-talk him in Kannada. Not sure if that made a difference.

Standing next to us was a young Swede who was having the same problem. He was in India on a tourist visa and had gone to Sri Lanka. We lent him our ipad to prove he had a ticket that meant he wasn't going to overstay.

Bottom line is: you never know what you are going to get. Make sure you have all your documentation with you at all times and try and get the airline to help you, as NoFlyZone did.

Yes, the application of the rule is variable. It shouldn't affect you, but expect to have to show all of your tickets to prove onward travel.

What user says in interesting, as when the rule was enacted (after the horrible terrorist attack in Mumbai) it was said it was to prevent people coming in and out of the country scoping out targets for terrorists.

Thanks again for the ongoing comments.If we travel with carryon ,do not need to claim bags ,but have about a 12 hour layover before we board our Sri Lankan airlines flight (separate ticket) ,can we remain in the same terminal,or would there be a problem obtaining a boarding pass for this flight if we don't report to their airline departures desk on the other side of immigration?

Hopefully, someone who has been through Delhi recently can answer you. In most places, there is a transit desk that can provide boarding passes without leaving the secure area, but I don't know specifically about Delhi.