Being that I’m travelling in just over six weeks, I decided that getting my visa sorted is a pretty high priority. The Consulate website is fairly thorough, but you can’t ask those little niggling questions, and all my attempts on the phone have failed to yield a answer, I mean, no one ever picks up. It gave the impression of being a one-person show, not too dissimilar to the Thai Embassy near New Street.

How wrong I was. I arrived at about 11am, and quickly located the rather sparse ground floor of the Consulate. From the outside it’s a small, ex-industrial office and the large empty ground floor gave the impression that even this was too big for the task. I was directed up a small stairwell and at this point was surprised to find myself pushing my way up an ever-thicker channel of people. At the top of the stairs is a short corridor leading up to an airport-style body scanner (which was making a lot of noise as people passed in and out, but no one seems to be bothered). On the other side of the scanner must have been 200 to 300 people bunched outside the four tiny post office windows, and the one man who appeared to be directing the crowds wasn’t having much success in forming the hordes into an orderly queue.

Had he not have been making a beeline for the door as I came in, I wouldn’t have heard him tell me that there were no more visas to be issued today. They’d met their daily quota. I’m quite glad I didn’t have to queue for two hours to find that out.

The closest thing it equates to from memory was a coach station in Malaysia. Chaotic, and exciting. If my departure was less than four weeks away, I would be seriously worried by now, especially at the prospect of having to secure my visa queue number by arriving “between 6.30 and 7.30am” and not mid-morning as I have discovered. Thankfully they run a 4-week postal application. I think I’ll be taking that option.

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And I’ve booked it. I’m going to be flying from here to Milan, Milan to Delhi, Delhi to Kathmandu, and then return from Delhi a month later. Cracking, although I think my bank might be wondering what hit them. Actually the price wasn’t too bad, probably between £100 and £150 cheaper than I might have guessed so I’m quite pleased.

Despite clearing this up, my list of things to do is not shrinking and despite my best attempt to fall asleep last night, I didn’t actually nod off until about 4am, so it’s likely that I will be feeling rubbish by sometime mid afternoon.

This week holds all the excitement of being that time of year when my contract expires and I have the intense pleasure of looking at all the sparkly new handsets. This isn’t going to be an expensive exercise though, not if I can help it. I’m quite prepared to dodge networks in order to get the best deal and I don’t particularly want to be spending more than I already am already; I’m saving any extra pennies for my trip to patch up some of the damage Jade Goody has done to international relations.

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