Waiting for Max – getting established and the vehicle import process

Establishing ourselves in India

The experience of getting ourselves established in India has been an interesting one – and it still continues. We thought that we’d describe some of the steps and share our experience for others who may be interested. It’s a bit of a dry read I’m afraid, but may help someone preparing to come here, to set their expectations right from the start rather than learn the more difficult way as we have.

We arrived in India one week before our vehicle arrived, feeling that should be ample time to get acclimatised and set up things for customs clearance. In between experiencing the culture shift of being in Mumbai, we worked on getting ourselves equipped for the coming months. Each task seemed to take an inordinate amount of time, paper work, shrugging of shoulders on their part and crossing of fingers on our part…. We had to quickly get used to waiting and not knowing – two things that don’t come easily to either of us.

Getting connected in India – phones and internet

We are travelling with a global wifi device from GlocalMe that we can tether our phones and ipads to for internet connection. Ours is the dual SIM DuoTurbo device that has a global e-sim for coverage in over 200 countries, plus ability to add a local SIM. The GlocalMe wifi has been very good as it allows us to be up and running in each country straight away. However, it is quite expensive, so as we were planning to be in India for 2-3 months we needed more cost effective local SIMs cards and internet connections.

To get our local SIM cards took several attempts over several days. Since the increased terrorist activity in India over the last few years, the requirements for obtaining a SIM card have been tightened. The current rule is that a new SIM card can only be issued to a person with an Indian PAN number (a national ID systems like a Tax File Number) with a local phone number to authenticate the request. As foreigners we had neither, and did not qualify for a SIM. We were advised that getting a local SIM would required an extensive application process that would have taken quite some time and possibly not have got us the required result.

Eventually after several different lines of enquiry we arrived at what seems to be a common workaround – involving “phone a friend”. After nearly three hours in the Vodaphone shop, passport and visa checks, ID photos and with the assistance our shipping agent providing her personal ID and local phone number to enable the cards to be issued to us, we walked out with working phones.

The pre-paid SIM is pretty economical, costing only around IR299 ($5.40) per month for 1.5gb data daily allowance and unlimited local calls. That explains why everyone here seems to have a phone glued to their ear all of the time. Nevertheless, it was great to be back on the air – we were not quite ready to go totally off-grid!

Driving in India – Mandatory insurance

Insurance was the next challenge. To legally drive our vehicle in India we needed to have compulsory third party insurance. We approached TATA AIG, the largest local insurer. After two days, including a visit to two of their offices, lots of exchanged documents and many phone calls to-ing and fro-ing, we received an offer to insure Max (high fives). Then came time to pay. The total was a little over IR 9300 (A$170) for the minimum period of 12 months. But payment could only be made via the online portal. (no cash or credit cards accepted). That seemed pretty good, until the catch arrived. Only Indian nationals or those with a local PAN (Tax file number) can make an online payment. And the payment can only be in the name of the insured person. So, “computer says NO”. Try as we may we couldn’t get the TATA AIG policy to paid status. We had been in India a week and still did not have the insurance sorted. Without the Insurance there would be no green light to get Max through customs. (Long faces all round)

Then we encountered some wonderful good fortune. We relocated to the Uran Plaza Hotel, a very small but spacious 6-room hotel about two hours away from Mumbai. The hotel is about 40 minutes from the port and we felt it would be a good place to work through the final customs arrangements and set up our troopy before embarking on the drive.

The hotel is owned by a lovely lady called Jennifer, whose family is very well connected in the shipping industry and in Mumbai in general. Jennifer provided us with great local insights on how to get things done here, including some names to drop when things got sticky. After trying a second insurance broker (same problem) we arrived at a third broker reccomended by the WIAA (West India Auto Association), who set up a new policy with another insurer, Digit Insurance, that could be paid by credit card. That sounded like the ideal solution (more high fives) but…. The digit online system only accepted Indian Mastercards and Visa cards, not international cards and so we were back at square one again. (gritted teeth now)

With Jennifer’s help to escalate our situation, we were able to get the broker to pay for the insurance on our behalf, and in turn receive the required payment in cash from us. So on day 8 we received our insurance certificate (huge relief).

Importing a vehicle to India – Carnet

A Carnet de Passages en Duane is an internationally recognised “passport” that allow a personal vehicle to be imported and then re-exported from a country without needing to pay import duties and establish local vehicle registration. India requires a carnet. Other countries either work with a carnet or have their own temporary import process that is completed at the land borders.

Our carnet is issued by the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) as part of the (IAA) Federation of International Automobile Associations. You can read more about the carnet here.

The local branch in Maharashtra state is the WIAA (West India Automobile Association) as part of the FIAA (Federation of Indian Automobile Associations). They are the body who will assess your application for validity, check that all requirements have been met and if approved, issue a NOC (No Objection Certificate) allowing customs to progress with the import clearance.

The documents required by the WIAA are:

International Driving licence

Some countries like India require that you have an International Driving licence, others allow you to drive on your home country licence. For simplicity and peace of mind an international driving licence is reccomended for overlanders planning to travel across multiple borders. The International driving licence application process in Australia was quick and easy. An application via the AAA with a passport size photo and scanned copies of the required ID documents was completed online. Our licences were approved quickly and arrived in the post about 3-4 days later. One of the easier parts of our trip preparation.

Making payments in India

At this point is is worth a quick comment about making payments to anyone in India. The financial regulations in India implemented in the past two years have placed severe restrictions on transactions by international travellers. Here our credit cards have been next to useless which totally surprised us as much of what is read about travel in India still states that cards are widely accepted. Fortunately, we did change a few thousand Aussie dollars into rupees on arrival and we are steadily working our way through them.

On the street almost all transactions must be in cash. Few retailers have any Credit card EFT facilities and none we’ve found so far can process our cards. The locals use a phone payment app called , but you can only access this app with (you guessed it) an Indian ID number and an Indian bank account. From what we can see, Apple Pay or other international credit or debit payment systems will not work here.

For hotels we found that our international credit cards did not work and cash was required. Fortunately, hotels booked through booking.com were charged directly to our card via the booking.com system, either partly or in full, depending on the individual hotel’s terms.

For business transactions that need a remote online payment, there seemed to be little option but to make an international bank transfer, which takes time and needs chasing up at the Indian end. We found that transactions with a confirmed deposit receipt from Westpac Australia, did not appear in the recipient’s account without them chasing with their bank. This could be 4-5 or more days later, so any payments that have an urgency about them need advance planning.

In Mumbai we went into the biggest bank we could find, the Bank of India main branch, to try to make a withdrawal at an ATM. They could not process our withdrawal. An official told that this is unlikely to be different in any of the other Indian banks, and directed us next door to HSBC. Apparently, only the international banks would facilitate withdrawals from international accounts or cards.

Good news is that we successfully made withdrawals from our savings accounts at HSBC so now we can confidently plan our trip around places with an HSBC branch!! (We are yet to test other international banks like CitiBank)

Our experience to date is based on Mumbai and Maharashtra state, so I hope this may be different in other states when we eventually start moving.

Working with a shipping agent

Our shipping agent in India, SAR Transport, has been helpful so far but I feel we may have reached the limits of their capacity (or willingness) about half way through the import process. It is clear that importing a private vehicle into India, by sea, is not an everyday event. Coming overland may well have been a bit simpler if that option had been open to us.

We’ve provided copious amounts of documentation and visited at their office to finalise the details. However, even the people at SAR shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads in answer to the question of when we could get Max released.  Max arrived right at the start of the “Holi” festival of the colours, to celebrate the start of spring. Which means everyone effectively downed tools for a four to five day holiday weekend.
So we waited some more…. And we hadn’t even started to deal with customs yet which no doubt was going to be a whole new adventure.

Customs process in India

The customs clearance process has been described to us in several stages:

1. Make an application to the FIAA / WIAA for them to issue an NOC (No Objections Certificate) for the Carnet import approval ( This inlcudes all of the Carnet documents outlined above) – this step took 10 days due to the insurance delay
2. Gather all of the required paperwork, including the NOC. In particular make sure that you have the Bill of Lading from your country of origin shipping agent and that you have signed the original copy. Ideally this should all be prepared and ready in advance of the shipment arriving.
3. Pay all outstanding bills including shipping line fees and progress payment to shipping agent (your shipping agent should pay the local bills and then oncharge you in their invoice.) Note that there should be no import fees, duties or taxes as these are not applicatble when you have a carnet.
4. Submit all of the documents – in person including originals (done by our agent) – 1 day
5. Obtain customs general approval to import – 1-2 days
6. Obtain customs approval from the “commercial division” for the Carnet component – an additional approval escalation to a higher authority that has apparently been added to the process due to prior carnets not being managed properly – 1 day
7. Customs open the container and check that the contents match the paperwork. (We asked to attend this but were advised that the extra application for us to attend would add another escalated approval step and a further day to the process. So we have crossed our fingers and delegated this part to our agent) – 1 day, providing its scheduled for the next day
8. If all is good with the inspection, put everything back into the vehicle and park it in a secure customs location (CFS). If not good – add anoher black hole and more days.
9. Customs process more paperwork then move the vehicle to the place where it will be released. 1-2 days
10. Collect it and drive away (quickly before more paperwork or approvals are called for)

It should be noted that customs works from 11am to 3pm, so not much gets done in a day. They do not work on Saturdays or Sundays or public holidays, or it seems, days just prior to or immediately after public holidays.

Everything takes time