Moving (back) to India

I recently returned to India (R2I) after spending the better part of the last decade in Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. I had left India in the middle of high school and though I had been back every year for short spells, I had not lived there in quite a while. I was also moving to a city I had never been to previously and where I had few friends (Mumbai).

Before my move, my online research showed that while there are a ton of forums and blogs dedicated to the R2I experience, I found that they focus mostly on the needs of families who’re moving back (and usually to their hometowns). There were somewhat fewer resources for younger people moving to less familiar territories.

This is a series of posts intended to illustrate the research I did when planning the move back. I’ll break it down into the following parts:

• Documentation
• Personal Finance (Banking, Credit Cards, Foreign Exchange services)
• Housing
• Connectivity

While the posts will be based mostly on my own experience and will focus on examples in Mumbai, the hope is that the series is useful to a broader audience (anyone moving to a new urban area in India, be it Bangalore, Hyderabad or New Delhi). I will also try to add bits and features that may be useful for others in slightly different situations (expats moving to India for the first time, PIOs/OCIs, people who love reading posts about bureaucratic arcana etc.)