British, living in Netherlands, Indian visa application

[emmigrator123]

Hi,

I recently acquired British citzenship (formerly Indian national) and am planning to travel to India, along with my wife and daughter (both British) to visit my parents. I live in the Netherlands and I thought it would be a straight forward application for a tourist visa at the Indian embassy in NL. How wrong was I. I was told that the embassy in NL has stopped processing visas for Briitish nationals, and they have to apply at Paris or London (via vfs global). I already rang the vfs in Paris and they said that as we are not residents in France, the processing might take much longer. I also rang the vfs in the UK, and they say that we can't post our application directly to them, but they are OK if we send it to a friend in the UK and they post it and receive it on our behalf. Having dealt with lots of visa malarkey over the years, I am still surprised by this.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Did you get around the problem of going through a third person?