Back to India! Finally for Real!

September 6, 2022

It was a long (but maybe not in the best way) summer waiting to clear court, but our flights are booked, and departure day is rapidly approaching. We are leaving for India on October 2, only three and a half weeks away. There’s quite a bit that’s happened since we put out our last post and quite a bit that needs to happen before we leave. It’s exciting and nerve wracking, even though we’ve been down this road before.

Starting back at the time of our last update, in early July, we were anticipating the court order to finalize the adoption. On July 19, the court approved our petition, this is what we called “verbal orders.” At that point, we legally were parents to our daughter, Anandhi (Pronounced Uh - nun - dee, then try to say it a little fast). That’s the name she’s been given in India. We still haven’t shared the name we will give her, since we kind of… maybe… haven’t really… totally… decided, yet…. She’s just like 8,500 miles away, so it all still feels surreal.

The SAA (Specialized Adoption Agency, i.e., the orphanage) is continuing to take good care of Anandhi and filing paperwork on our behalf while we’re waiting to travel. We got the official written court order on August 12, which is what was actually needed to finish up the last of the paperwork needed to be issued by India. After that the SAA applied for her birth certificate and passport. We still are waiting for those to be received, but we’ve been told everything SHOULD be received by the end of September. We could have waited until then to book our travel but given all the factors and having run out of patience, we decided to start booking. Actually, Leah already had been emailing for a few weeks with Adoption Airfare, a travel agency specializing in international adoption. So, she was ready to travel quite a while ago.

On October 2nd, we will begin our 30+ hour travel journey to get our daughter. For those of you who want to look up the math at home: Drive to O’Hare → Ohare to Dubai → 7.5 hr layover → Dubai to Chennai → Drive Chennai to Tiruvannamalai. Also, to answer the question everyone asks, “Are you taking Ravi?”. Yes, he’s coming along. It will be hard to take an energetic 5-year-old halfway around the world, but we feel that it will be incredibly special for him to be there. I am very much openly dreading all the hours in cars, in the airport, and on planes, but he’s a trooper and so excited. Once we’re on our 15th hour on a plane, I have a feeling the excitement will wear off. We just have one-way tickets, and we’ll book return flights based on how smoothly things go while we’re there. We’re hoping our trip will just be about two weeks, or less.

While we’re there we’ll have a few days in Tiruvannamalai to get to know our daughter and eventually take custody. Then we’ll travel to New Delhi where we’ll need to get her an H3B Visa to enter the country and become a citizen. That process includes a medical appointment and an interview at the US Embassy. We’ll also need to obtain an exit Visa from India for her and us to leave the country. All that process takes about 3-5 days to process (after a bunch more paperwork I should add). I doubt we’ll do much for sightseeing, but if we have a day or two without appointments maybe we’ll be able to squeeze something in.

The next few weeks will be pretty busy and will likely fly by. We will be doing our best to keep friends and family posted before we leave and while we’re there. We appreciate all the excitement and support as we have been working/slogging through the process to bring our daughter home. Lots of people have asked how they can help and while we certainly have no expectations of anything, we do have a baby registry on Amazon and have set up a page to collect monetary gifts through PayPal. Thank you for all of the love and we’re looking forward to introducing everyone to Anandhi!!

-Ryan and Leah