• DebconfTravel2023

1. DebConf data

DebConf23 will be held at Infopark, Kochi, India, 10th September → 17th September 2023.

DebCamp is from Sunday, 3rd September to Saturday 9th September, 2023.

2. Attending

Registration is not yet open.

Planning to attend:

3. Accommodation and local transport

4. Travel to/from Kochi

Flying seems likely to be the only viable option. Airport codes: COK (IATA), VOCI (ICAO)

4.1. Flying

There do not appear to be any direct flights to Cochin Airport from the UK. Qatar offer flights via Doha, BA or Virgin Atlantic will both fly to New Delhi or Mumbai and use various domestics to get to Kochi. Vistara is recommended for the domestic sector.

4.2. Driving

Almost certainly impractical this year.

4.3. Railing

Rail travel from one of the major airports (e.g. Delhi) is certainly feasible, but will likely take two or more days.

5. Entry requirements

UK residents require a visa. A Conference e-Visa is available to GB nationals between 120 and 4 days in advance of expected arrival, apply at https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html. A letter of invitation is required plus upload of a photograph and the photo page of your passport. Allow 72 hours for issuance. This process should hopefully avoid the need to visit an embassy and send off passports for paper visas.

Partial visa applications expire after 7 days, so have everything ready to go before you start.

6. Customs

TBC.

7. Local SIMs

An Airtel SIM is recommended for good coverage, and can be bought in the airports. Online pricing implies 299INR for 1.5GB data per day. SIMs can be converted to eSIM with a convoluted SMS process, so the physical SIM does need inserting. It is not known whether eSIMs can be bought directly.