Must confess to excess stress from this mess

So it's unbelievable how hard India makes it for us to go there and spend money. I mean, do they really think I'm going to overstay my visa and detract from their economy and national security? You can't even transit from one terminal in the airport to another without a "transit visa".

The only way for me to get a visa is an overly cumbersome and circuitous path of mailing my physical passport (!) to a company that processes visa applications for them.

Bed enough with ID theft so rampant these days, but add to that the fact that I am in a foreign country and literally stranded if my passport doesn't return before I wish/need to leave.

Then the options for mailing it suck too. I mailed it on the 7th, and it still doesn't show up in the US Postal Service's tracking system online. Check on it at the postal annex and the ever-so-helpful KBR dude tells me it might not arrive for a month: first I heard that.

I need to be ready to leave here by the 15th of January, just to have some leeway. By the time my stuff arrives in Sanf Fran, gets processed, and sent back, that's kind of pushing it. Not a good feeling.