The Indian Visa Problem

We are planning what will probably be our last visit to India. We say that every time, but this year some nervous friends have persuaded us to take them to South India before they go off on their own to the North and we go on to Sri Lanka, a place I have never visited. When we have taken people to Kerala in the past we have loved showing them the places we have been to and giving them a taste of the experiences we have loved.
Everything is planned and mostly paid for, but then comes the detail, inoculations, airport car parks and The Visa.
Getting an Indian visa has always been a test of determination. When we fist went, James was doomed to queuing outside India House in the Aldwych at 5.30 in the morning to get a ticket to tell him if we would be able to have the visa that day. He would them spend hours sitting in various queues by the infamous "do not ask questions here" window. Once he did not manage to get a ticket and had to stay in a cheap hotel and try again the next day. He often did this for clients as well.
At long last the electronic application process arrived and for a couple of years it got easier, a form filled in online and then a trip to Victoria before the courier returned tha passports a few days later.
Then the complications began again. Last year he had to go to the far end of the Goswell road, but that was OK until they refused our photographs.
Indian visa photographs are not as other photographs for passports etc. in that they are square. The eyes have to be positioned exactly and there are other specifications which might make sense in a parallel universe. This time we think they did not like the paper the photos were printed on and James had a panic-stricken time getting a photographic shop to scan and reprint the pictures until they passed inspection.
Seeing that this year the office had moved to Uxbridge, James vowed that we would not go through the whole sorry busness again and that we would use a visa agency. This we are doing.
That brings the cost of our two visas up to over £250.
My conclusion is that a visit to India is not to be undertaken as lightly as we have tended to do. A six-month visa used to only allow re-entry at two month intervals, a problem if you had flights which went through India after a visit elsewhere. This was on the grounds of security after the Mumbai attacks. I think that this may be changed, but there is no chance of the new "visa on arrival" system which is being introduced for some nationalities being extended to the UK. At least not as long aswe make it so difficult for Indian nationals to travel here.