Friday night on the way out at BOM

• After a ridiculously long security line, I made it to the e gates. All four had green lights on and I saw a couple of people use them whilst I was walking up. Seemed rather smooth. As for me,
• It asked me to scan my boarding pass and then my passport. Which I did and the first gate opened.
• The second check was fingerprint - all good so far.
• Finally the picture. It captured my picture and then I got a red cross with the message "See officer" or some such.
• So I waved to the officer who was at the immigration desk dedicated for e gate issues.
• Long story short, he couldn't get the gate to open so I was stuck in this no man's land between the gates for about 10 minutes
• They did something from the back and the first gate opened so I went back out and was asked to go to the regular counter
• At the regular counter, the officer couldn't process me because the system had already marked me as having exited the country
• So off he went to the office and came back a couple of minutes later to say that he had permission from the senior officer to let me through

I was travelling with a friend and he couldn't use the gates at all. The immigrationwallah's amusing explanation was that it was likely because his boarding pass did not print his complete name. Really, it was only the last two letters of his middle name that weren't printed because of space limitations. The actual airline record had the complete and correct name that matched his passport and FTI registration. Even funnier, another officer suggested that we contact the airline and ask them to not be cheap and print the full name because apparently airlines want to save printing costs so they restrict the number of characters they print on the boarding pass! Haha!

And since both of us ended up at the regular counter, we had our BPs stamped, so I don't know if an unmutilated BP would have caused an issue.


Sunday night on the way back in at BOM

• No issues at all. Took all of 30 seconds to enter the country.
• Which also meant no irrelevant questions from Immigrationwallahs

I'll chalk the departure situation up to teething issues or something like that - both mine and my friend's. Other than that, it was smooth and the immigration staff were very friendly and helpful. I thought the boarding pass and passport scans were unnecessary steps, but overall much welcomed (and long, long overdue!).


By the way, this was likely my smoothest trip in terms of immigration:

• I could have exited India in 30 seconds (this one glitch apart)
• I was able to enter Hong Kong in 30 seconds
• Exit Hong Kong in 30 seconds
• And then enter India in 30 seconds

All super quick and without having to deal with a single apparatchik in either country!