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:

Nick	DebCamp	DebConf	Further travel	Registration
Noodles	No	Yes	No	⛔
jmw	No	Yes	Delhi day trip on inbound	⛔
bootc	No	Yes	Delhi day trip on inbound	⛔

3. Accommodation and local transport

Hotel	People
Four Points Sheraton, Kochi Infopark	Noodles

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.

Name	Nick	Contact	Outbound	Return
Jonathan McDowell	Noodles	noodles@earth.li	BA0247 -> UK0885 arrive 9/9 19:10	UK0886 -> BA0142 leave 16/9 19:55
JonathanWiltshire	jmw	jmw@d.o	VS300 7/9, UK885 8/9	UK886 17/9, VS301 18/9
ChrisBoot	bootc	bootc@d.o	VS300 7/9, UK885 8/9	UK886 17/9, VS301 18/9

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. Upload of a photograph and the photo page of your passport is required. Allow 72 hours for issuance. This process should hopefully avoid the need to visit an embassy and send off passports for paper visas.

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.

TheEarthWiki: DebconfTravel2023 (last edited 2023-08-14 16:51:26 by JonathanMcDowell)

-  ⇤ ← Revision 1 as of 2022-10-25 07:31:02 → 
  Size: 1519
  Editor: JonathanMcDowell
  Comment: Add initial DebConf23 info.
+   ← Revision 8 as of 2023-05-16 14:27:16 → ⇥
  Size: 3010
  Editor: JonathanWiltshire
  Comment:
-Deletions are marked like this.
+Additions are marked like this.
 Line 17:
+|| jmw              || No             || Yes            || Delhi day trip on inbound ||  ⛔            ||
|| bootc            || No             || Yes            || Delhi day trip on inbound ||  ⛔            ||
-Line 24:
+Line 25:
-= Travel to/from Prizren =
+= Travel to/from Kochi =
-Line 26:
+Line 27:
-Flying seems likely to be the only viable option.
+Flying seems likely to be the only viable option. Airport codes: COK (IATA), VOCI (ICAO)
-Line 30:
+Line 31:
-There do not appear to be any direct flights to [[https://www.cochinairport.com/|Cochin Airport]] from the UK. Qatar offer flights via Doha, BA will fly to New Delhi and use Vistara internally to get to Kochi.
+There do not appear to be any direct flights to [[https://www.cochinairport.com/|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.
-Line 34:
+Line 35:
+|| JonathanWiltshire  || jmw          || jmw@d.o          || VS300 7/9, UK885 8/9              || UK886 17/9, VS301 18/9            ||
|| ChrisBoot          || bootc        || bootc@d.o        || VS300 7/9, UK885 8/9              || UK886 17/9, VS301 18/9            ||
-Line 37:
+Line 40:
+Almost certainly impractical this year.
-Line 38:
+Line 43:
+Rail travel from one of the major airports (e.g. Delhi) is certainly feasible, but will likely take two or more days.
-Line 41:
+Line 48:
-TBC.
+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]]. Upload of a photograph and the photo page of your passport is required. Allow 72 hours for issuance. This process should hopefully avoid the need to visit an embassy and send off passports for paper visas.
-Line 48:
+Line 55:
+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 [[https://www.airtel.in/esim|convoluted SMS process]], so the physical SIM does need inserting. It is not known whether eSIMs can be bought directly.