Prep to the journey - an experience!

Well as promised, here is an update of the prep to my journey! My(and others) visa processing got quite delayed and I along with some other colleagues travelling with me were on tenterhooks waiting for them. Finally on Wednesday we heard news that the visas were processed and we would receive them. Me not being the main office was to collect my passport from the airport itself. So we were all ready to fly on sat night when we got the news that Monday is a thanksgiving holiday out here so we changed tickets to Sunday evening. Now all was fine until I left office on Friday – set with the e-tickets in hand. Saturday I did my last minute shopping. No matter how often you travel and how long you know in advance, there are always some last min things to be bought – yeah well its true for me at least! So I was out doing that, my cell phone battery conked off and so I was unreachable. After returning home, when I charged the battery sufficiently, I noticed a message from the travel dept guy asking me to call him up. He tells me that there was a huge drama and that my tickets are changed and he had sent out new tickets. Now the drama being, earlier tickets were from continental airlines and I was flying in from the US. According to the (new?) laws, we need to have US visas if we have a transit from there!! This was found by accident by another colleague who would also be flying with me. She had a casual call from one of her friends who works with the travel industry and he told her of this requirement. She tried to find out more and talked to some official from the Continental airlines directly who confirmed of this requirement. The she spoke to Thomas Cook and they confirmed as well.

Now this was notified to our travel dept back at the office and after some more rounds of back and forth, our tickets were finally changed to this new airline – Lufthansa. Now the story doesn’t end here; there is another twist. On Friday I had notified the travel rep that we had not received any formal documentation - no business invitation letter or other formal documentation. He assured me that none is required. Obviously I was not convinced and printed out all the meeting requests and any other doc to this effect that I had but left for the day unsure.

There was still this bug bothering me on Sunday which was the day I was to fly so I called up my manager to get any available documentation he had from the client or our onsite office. He was surprised that the travel desk did not give us the same and sent out some. That put me to peace. And thus ends my pre-travelling adventure.

But come to think of it, what if we had travelled on the initially booked airlines without any documentation with us? Shouldn’t the travel department guys know about it? It gets pretty frustrating as this is their job and they should know their job.