Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's a busy old day,

so I won't take up too much of your time or indeed mine. I want to bring you some good news,

and that is that India has restored the E visa option for British travellers. Well, I say it has restored the e-visa option for British travellers.

Well, I say it has restored it.

We have heard just in the past few minutes from the Indian High Commissioner in London,

and that's Vikram Dori Swami,

that this service will be made available for you forthwith.

He said that should enable friends from the UK to travel far more easily to India.

So welcome back.

E visas are up ahead.

We look forward to a good winter season in which everybody gets to celebrate their festivals in India,

which is the land of festivals.

Well, that's a really good and really upbeat message, but the trouble is it is absolutely not clear when operations will resume.

This is evidently something which has happened very recently, and there is no change to the list of nationalities

for which the e-visa is an option. Still consists of 150 countries, forgive me, 156 countries,

including all 27 EU countries, but not the UK. Just a reminder about what this is all about. Up until the COVID crisis,

almost everybody going to India on holiday or for business would get an e-visa. It wasn't the

simplest e-visa in the world. Cricy, lots and lots of online FAF problems with payments, all sorts of things over the years.

But at least it meant you didn't need to attend an appointment.

Then COVID happened. No e-visas at all. Then e-visas were brought back in.

Everyone thought, well, isn't that marvell marvelous? What a great thing. But it didn't

apply to British travellers. And that seems to be because, well, there is a political row about

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