I think the silliest system I’ve been through was in immediately post communist Poland. You needed a visa but you bought it at the airport on arrival. In zlotys, which it was illegal to have outside the country, but the exchange booth was the other side of passport checking.

I did pick up a ‘what a stupid law; I can’t believe I almost got into trouble for breaking it’ impression when I read your article for my piece; looking over your article again, there is also some ‘oh, I’m so naive’-ness. So my tone was unnecessarily strong: sorry.

And I agree that making you buy visas in advance is silly, as is almost every aspect of immigration procedure almost everywhere.

Nonetheless, I’m still amazed that, as an experienced journalist, you made the mistake in the first place. It is *exactly* the same kind of error that got Elena Lappin locked in a cell and deported from the US: different countries have different entry restrictions, and you ignore them at your peril.

(and my full name is printed at the bottom of every page on this website, so I’m not quite sure what your point is there.)

I accepted that I had made a mistake and needed to buy a temporary entry permit. The Indian authorities were happy to issue one after consular intervention. But why should that have been necessarry?

John B seems not to have noticed that I confessed, publicly, to having made a mistake. I did not need to tell my readers what had happened. At least I put my name to what I wrote.