we’re going on a passport hunt!

Ok, so… the short version of the story is, we still have no passports!

Although we were told it takes 5-7 days to receive our Indian Visas, we are currently on day 11, empty-handed. After checking the Indian Consulate passport tracking site religiously for the past week, and daily calls to the (umm, unhelpful) help line, finally the status of my passport changed! It was being shipped to Calgary today! Although Chris’s passport status hadn’t changed, we  decided to go down to the Calgary office for the Indian Consulate today and see what we could do.

Turns out, my passport wasn’t in Calgary after all. Same story for Chris.  And as you can imagine, they couldn’t do anything …. BUT (thanks to a few good prayers sent out to our travel angels by my mom)…. The Vice president of Visa Services and some head guy from the Canadian consulate happened to be in town on a tour of the facility or something. He over heard my begging and pleading, and well not taking “they might be in by next Wednesday” for an answer! (Wednesday!! are you kidding me?!?!) So, this guy gets on the phone and tracks my passport down in Surry and thinks Chris’ s might be en route to Surrey this afternoon. Together we come up with a plan of driving to Vancouver on Sunday in order to pick up our passports on Monday morning at 8:00 am from the Surrey office! We waited all night but finally at 8:00pm this evening finally got confirmation that both passports (complete with Indian Visas) are waiting for us in BC! YAY!

So although we are off to a late start, and are adding a Canadian leg to our road trip, we think we will be pulling into the U.S. before lunch on Monday! Now lets hope none of the instructions got crossed and our passports don’t get shipped to Calgary as we are driving to Surrey!

We have decided to leave tomorrow and drive to Chris’s parents cabin in Radium to shave 2 hours off the drive to Vancouver on Sunday. We are excited to get going on this trip and have said all of our good-bye’s (some of them twice!) so figure we may as well hit the road! I have never left for a trip without checking to make sure I have my passport 10 times! This seems so strange to set out on a trip around the world with no passports!

This will be our last post from Calgary!!! Thanks for everyone’s thoughts and prayers!

We will miss you all!

Ashlyn and Chris

4 days to go….. maybe

I can’t believe we only have 4 days left in Calgary! Chris and I spent the weekend packing and visiting with great friends and family so although we’re getting really excited to leave, it’s also tough to say our good-byes.

This week we ran into a bit of a snag while trying to obtain our visa’s for India. This has not been an easy process and our applications have now been rejected twice!! They are very particular on these applications! I feel like it is  impossible to guess the right answer! I have heard while travelling to India you need to have lots of patience, as nothing gets done quickly or they way you might want it done. I suppose they really try to break you in to their culture right from the get go with the visa application process!

It states at the top of the form “do not leave any blank spaces. Place N/A on any blank lines”. Ok, seems pretty easy. Wrong! It’s a bit of a guessing game as to how they want you to answer the questions.

Q.5. What is your Nationality … ‘CANADIAN’.

Correct.

What is your past Nationality….. ‘N/A’?

Nope!!!! The answer was ‘CANADIAN’?!?! huh?

Then another question we got wrong is

Where did you obtain your last Indian Visa….. ‘N/A’???

Nope! The answer is ‘NONE’. what???

It’s all very confusing, but we feel after two attempts we may have got it right this time!!! They were shipped back to the consulate Saturday evening.

So at this point we have no Indian Visas, and worse, our passports are somewhere in between here and Vancouver! Although we are scheduled to leave Friday morning, I guess we’ll wait to see when we get our passports back? Departure date is currently TBD!

Back to packing!

A Taste of Turkey

Can’t wait to do this!!

408 Hours

Man, we’re lucky to have friends and family that are so stellar.  It’s starting to feel like we’re really going, and we’re already starting to miss you guys!  Keep us up to date on Facebook, Twitter, Emails and this blog.

Staying Connected

You might not believe it, but pre-trip planning is a full-time job.  Right now we’re trying to figure out the best way to capture and share our trip with everyone back home, and for us to remember down the road.  We’re exploring options with a bunch of different technology and applications…we’re getting there, but it’s been waaaaay more of a chore than I would have thought!  It’s a clear sign that those days where I could just figure new technology out in the blink of an eye are gone.  Does anyone have a 7 year old they could lend us to come over and teach us how to use all this stuff and make it work together?  Twitter, Gmail, Ipods, Facebook, Kobos, Cameras, WordPress(.com), Ipads…the list goes on.  I’m thinking I might not be able to take any clothes on the trip after I fill my backpack with USB cables, power converters, user manuals, power cords, and all the actual technology.

23 days

a few weeks to go and neither one of us can believe that were about to leave home, family and friends to hit the open road.  i’ve had a bunch of questions lately about which location we’re most excited about.  it’s a good question…there are a lot of interesting places to choose from.  after a non-existent summer in Calgary, we’re really most interested in chasing warm weather around the globe for a few months!

we’re submitting our visas for India tonight…wow, talk about a complicated process.  by the way, how do you call an international number that starts with 911 as the first 3 digits?  seems like a bit of an issue for someone calling from Canada.

by the seat of our pants

so last night ash and I were laying in bed chatting about the trip, how awesome it is that we’re 8 weeks away from the trip of a lifetime, and how stellar it will be to live life on the road for a little while.  then, ashlyn in all her creativity (she is actually really creative) comes up with the blog title ‘by the seat of our pants’.  Sounds interesting right?, and should be an accurate title for a blog of a newly married couple about to hit the road and see what life will take them…BUT, what you haven’t seen is the calendar…

this calendar (which is actually quite impressive) lays out everyday between october 1st and christmas day 2010.  every.  single.  day.  not only does it lay out every day, each day and each location over the 3 months has been assigned a colour, each colour has a coded and corresponding hanging file at home.  now, this is actually an absolutely fantastic quality that she has, and will make our trip infinitely better in more ways than i know.  but seriously, ‘by the seat of our pants’?!?