You might be thinking that choosing a photo of a military guard as the banner image for the post on India is a bit odd. But there’s a reason for that.

In order to do this trip, we needed to get some travel visas. Egypt, Oman, Jordan, India, and a couple others all require visas for use to visit. In every case except India, it was just a matter of going online, sending all the necessary information, uploading our vaccination certs, paying the fee, and less than a week later, voila! The visa arrives via email, we print it out or save it to the phone, and we’re done.

Except India. Well… you could do it that way if you were a citizen of 156 countries that India allows to do it that way. Canada is not one of the countries. Canadians (and Brits and some others) have to do it another way: 90 days ahead of time, you have to fill out all the paperwork and write a cheque for the fee, then mail all of that along with your passport to India - or to the Indian consulate in Surrey, BC (and then they mail it to India for you).

Um…. no. Firstly, we’re not going to do that. Secondly, even if we were willing, we were on a ship sailing around Iceland during the time we’d have needed to mail away our passports, so it wasn’t even an option.

I should mention that the Marco Polo cruise is a conglomeration of two Viking cruises, “A Passage to India” and “Across the Bay of Bengal” and lots of passengers that started with us in Athens were booked on that first one and needed to disembark in Mumbai and head home. There was the inevitable farewell party for those folks, hosted by the Captain, Atle Knutsen.

I’m glad we didn’t book that cruise, or we’d have been in the same situation as another Calgary couple we met. They were supposed to get off in Mumbai and head home, and they did the “mail your passports to the consulate in BC” option. They didn’t get them back in time. Nobody could tell them how long it would be. So just before the cruise, they spent a bunch of money declaring their passports lost, paying the fee to get emergency replacements, then paying more money to change all their flights so they could fly home from Oman rather than India. They also missed the last three days of the cruise because of that. They also missed the “Beatles Songbook” show, which was actually pretty decent, unlike the same show on the Viking Jupiter we’d seen a few months ago, which was cringe-worthy.

So even though we avoided the hassle of having to disembark here, it also meant that we couldn’t get off the ship at any port in India. Furthermore, Viking had to ensure that nobody without a visa would leave, so they collected our passports and locked them in a safe until we’ve left India. We weren’t the only ones. India has an appalling 12% rejection rate for visa applications and some people still got rejected even after multiple tries - but they still keep your application fee, even if you get rejected.

So it is what it is. We stay on the ship for the three days in Mumbai as well as the day in Goa (or whatever port is closest to Goa). Maybe the view from our stateroom will be nice.

Obviously, it isn’t. Eventually, apparently, that will look really nice, if the poster is any indication.

Seriously, that is gorgeous. It’s also way behind schedule. It was supposed to be completed in 2019. Then covid happened and everything shut down (which is likely why it looks like an abandoned site even now, with rusty rebar and such). The latest news I could find said that “work has resumed and it should be finished in January 2023.”

🤣

Yes, they’ve been working almost constantly since we’ve been here. All five of the workers have been working on it. That’s the most I’ve seen at any one time, usually it’s only two or three. I think their estimated completion date is a bit… optimistic.

So maybe let’s have a look off the other side of the ship to see if that view is any better.

That’s not early morning fog, that’s pollution. It’s really that bad. The view of the city/construction site I posted first is literally the clearest shot I have of it. The pollution haze here is unbelievable - and it smells as bad as it looks. To go from our cabin to the restaurants, we walk past the pool area, which is open with the roof retracted and windows down… and in just that short walk, perhaps only a couple dozen meters, you can taste the air. Breathe through your nose and it’s nasty. Breathe through your mouth, and it’s like the smog coats your palate, lingering there after you’ve gotten back inside. It’s disgusting. There’s a tall building close to the pier that looks like a wifi router and even that can’t be seen clearly most of the time.

So while I’m genuinely disappointed that we won’t get to see more of India than what we can see from the ship, I’m almost glad that we weren’t out in this smog for 3-4 hours on a tour. I have a hard enough time with the two minutes it takes to walk through the open air part of the ship. I can’t imagine breathing this mess for four hours.

I realize I said, “see India” just now. We thought that’s all we’d get to do, see it from the balcony, since we can’t leave the ship.

I have a Lego world map on the wall over in the East Wing and I colour in the countries I’ve been to and mark them with a little Lego flag.

Rob had been giving me a lot of crap about my intention to colour in India on my map, and I get it. I mean, even though we’re right here, we’re legitimately docked in Mumbai, does it really count if we never touch the ground? That’s the kind of thing that will keep me up at night, Rob wasn’t likely to let me forget it, and I honestly have zero plans to ever come back here again, so….

I went down to the gangway as soon as the ship got clearance, but before the tours headed out. I talked to the cruise coordinator, who was standing at the exit, and told him my problem, then asked if I could just go down the gangway, put both feet on the ground, then come right back. He said OK and even offered to take my picture while on Indian soil, so I have proof that I actually went to India and I can colour in my map without the need for an asterisk and explanatory footnote.

Our Viking Daily said we’d push away at 5pm, but at 5:20, I looked out the window and still saw the construction site. I held my breath and popped out onto the balcony with my camera to see what was up. All of the stuff on the dock had been picked up and put back on board, but we still had a gangway extended and Indian officials were milling around. We were still tied to the dock. Captain Atle did not look amused at all.

And here, ladies and gents, is why I carry the ‘good’ camera on vacation instead of just using the phone (which actually takes good pictures). Have a look at the pic of the captain above. You can almost read his name tag. And that’s where phone pics suuuuuuuuuck. If you need to zoom, you’re not going to fare well. For example, at the farewell party I mentioned earlier, I had the phone zoomed in all the way, just like I had the Nikon zoomed in all the way to get the photo above. The Nikon resulted in this kind of clarity, even at full zoom. The phone, even though I was half as far away from the captain, got this kind of detail:

Every time I think to myself, “I’ll just take the phone, it has a camera. Why lug the big camera around?” I go back and look at zoomed phone shots and it makes it all worth it.

For sunsets, however, the phone works as well as anything I’ve taken with the Nikon. Most of my sunset pics are done with the phone, because you don’t need to zoom those. Tonight’s sunset, however, was setting over a now-distant Mumbai and I needed to pull that closer to get this parting shot.

Several people were on deck as we left, and the consensus around the deck was “OMG, I’m so happy to be leaving this smog behind.”

Dinner was at Manfredi’s again and I had their signature Bistecca Fiorentina - a rib eye steak coated in garlic oil, porcini mushroom powder, kosher salt, brown sugar, and chilli flakes. It’s as good as it sounds.
The ship has a couple of items, though, that sound nasty but are actually quite good. I mentioned the Norwegian hot dog before, with the shrimp salad on it, and now I’ll mention the waffle:

It’s only available in the little bistro at the front of the ship, which has very limited hours, but their Smørrebrød (Danish open-faced sandwiches) and this waffle make it worth the hassle. You’d expect those curled things on top to be crunchy waffle dough and the white stuff under the fruit to be whipped cream, and you’d be wrong on both counts. The cream is actually sour cream and the curls are Norwegian brown goat cheese. Stay with me here.

The brown cheese tastes a bit like a caramel nougat, but not as sweet. The sour cream is savoury, the fruit is tart, and the maple syrup is sweet. It all combines for a surprisingly complex bite of varied flavours and textures. It’s delicious. I rarely have them for breakfast, though, opting to have them at lunch instead because they pair really well with red wine. No, really. I joked at first about “what wine pairs well with waffle?” but it actually goes really well with a red.

Right around lunchtime today, we arrived at the port of Mormugao, which is where you dock if you want to go to Goa. We actually do want to go to Goa, but we can’t, because our passports are still locked away until we leave India. Ah, well. At least the view from the balcony is better than last time.

And it’s still hazy, but you can at least see things and the air doesn’t taste like garbage, so yay.

The view from the other sides of the ship aren’t as good, though. Off the back is a tired-looking cruise ship.

It looks surprisingly good in that photo, actually, but when you get up close, it really shows its age. I looked it up and the ship is 32 years old, but got a refurbishment last year. I’m assuming the refurb was mostly interior. I wonder how long they run these ships before they retire them?

Off the starboard, there’s the remnants of something that has burned down. I’ll spare you that picture.

As the folks who were able to leave the ship headed out for their excursions, a 4-piece band played them off to their buses. They were, and this is as nicely as I can put it, mediocre. When I snapped this pic, they were attempting to play Hello, Dolly as a Dixieland number. Bless their hearts. Still way more entertaining than the drummers who sonically assaulted the tour goers in Mumbai yesterday!

And that’s it for India. We push off tonight for our next stop and as soon as we’re away from shore, we can have our passports back. There’s an at-sea day after that, and then the next day we can finally go ashore and see something interesting.

[EDIT] I talked to some shipmates who went ashore on excursions. They said they had to wait in long lineups in security, where they were fingerprinted both getting off and getting back on the ship, as well as spot-checks for paperwork when the bus stopped somewhere. What a load of crap. Way to stifle tourism, India. I’m not likely to ever come back.

On to Sri Lanka!

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