Importing goods into India.

Every week   I get letters   either  asking how much  I paid for ATV in China or  how much import duty was charged by Indian customs.

Many of these enquiries happens to be just for creating nuisance and nothing is going to be achieved by those people. Still I politely used to reply every one of them.

The total amount I paid as cost to ATV manufacturer in China and to Indian customs do not give whole picture. About sixty five percent have been spent under above two headings whereas one third money have been spent to facilitate the transfer. In earlier posting have made a list where you have to spend money.

Here is an example. As I mentioned earlier procedure involved for customs clearance of very small consignment and very big are basically same, the charges may appear to be expensive for small consignment. The agency charges for me was INR 6500 which will be same even for a small consignment.

So importing small consignment hoping to get it bit cheaper is very foolish thinking. We have to import the things if and only if the goods are not available locally or monopoly dealers quote exorbitant prices for that.

Second part of our Seashore trip

Our first seashore expedition was cut short by heavy rainfall and impending darkness. The incomplete part as I saw in wikimaps was very spectacular and on the same day I made up my mind to come back to complete the remaining distance.

Since the remaining portion was very small that can be covered in one hour or a little more, we started from Padubidri coast. We planned to start at three in the evening and visited relatives in the afternoon.

Rohit arrived at rendezvous point in time, accompanied by a TV team from Namma TV. It was bit unexpected by me and immediately we started unloading and got the ATV ready. Anil accompanied by Abhinav was the first team this time also. They were able to make it to Kaup quite fast as they were in familiar terrain.

There is a small stream amidst rocks near Kaup light house and we had to come bit inland to cross that stream. TV team captured some footage near Kaup lighthouse while I was impatient to continue so as to reach Malpe while there was still some light.

Sunil started riding after a while and he applied brakes while taking a turn and result was loose chain jumped the sprocket. I had not tightened the chain very much as sand getting settled on the interior of chain may make result in chain breakage. He was able to correct the problem and resume the journey. We were in mobile phone contact and was taking it easy.

The narrow strip of land between pangala river and sea makes the area very scenic. There is road and few coconut trees plus a house between the river and sea in this area. The famous mattu brinjal grows in place called Mattu around here. The sandy soil gives unique flavour to this brinjal and the rain in late November that cut short our trip did spoil the brinjal crop also.

We reached the endpoint around Six and had ample time to enjoy ATV rides in wide beach. Meanwhile Video team spoke with all of us and little Abhinav and Sunil did speak nicely in front of TV camera.