01.02.2016 Bavaria

I drove from Berlin to Venice to see the boat, stopping overnight at a motel in Pegnitz along the way.

02-22.02.2016 Lido di Jesolo, Venice, Milan

Boat repairs and India Visa

Grapto was not really fit for human habitation after so long on the hard so I stayed for a couple of nights in a hotel in Lido di Jesolo while I got things working. The main thing was new house batteries which I got in “Casa di Batteria” in Jesolo. Countless other essential bits a pieces were sourced in the local chandleries.

I had a quick trip on the ferry to St Mark’s to catch the tail end of the Carnivale in Venice. I just missed the fireworks and the whole piazza was ankle deep in confetti with a few masked revellers lying around looking stunned. I’ll make a better showing another year.

Needing a tourist visa for India in March (Plan A) I applied for an e-visa which is a wholly unnecessary bit of bureaucracy in this modern age but it turned out to be totally useless if arriving in India by boat. So (Plan B), I schlepped from Venice to Milan to go to the Indian Embassy to get a full-blown tourist visa. The embassy, which is just behind La Scala opera house, was stuffed with Indians trying to get home to the mother country. I think some of them had been there for days. After all kinds of adventures trying to get the specified size of passport photograph  I was told they would keep my passport for 8-15 days. With a Pakistan visa already in my passport my guess is I would be lucky to ever see my passport again. So that was a waste of two days of driving, 40 Euros in road tolls and an overnight hotel stay. Plan C is to try again in Bangkok.

So back to working on the the boat. It rained almost continuously for two weeks and working outside with power tools is not recommended in the rain so it slowed things down a bit and soon it was time to head off to Marco Polo Airport for the flight to Abu Dhabi and Bangkok.