I am going Lufthansa from Dallas to Mumbai with a stop at Frankfurt. Got all the documents done except for the NOC. Sending the documents to India today. Hoping it won’t take longer as I’m leaving on 29th. A little worried about obtaining the NOC, but I guess it should be fine. Your blog has been a great help! Thanks again!

Regards
Shamitha

I would still recommend the Lufthansa flight ex DFW (if they still do that route). Don’t do the new Emirates flight, as sometimes the connections from that flight to India are long and its still quite warm there.. plus they don’t appear to have any sympathy for handling dogs at Dubai airport I see dogs sitting on the warm tarmac all the time there.

Thanks for the very useful info you’ve provided regarding pet transport to India! I am travelling to India from Dallas with my 2 year old labrador Aura on Dec 29th. I got all the info required from here but I had a doubt as to what the India sanitary certificate was. It says somewhere in one of your attachments that the certified copy of the APHIS form, the India Sanitary Certificate, the pet’s inoculation record and the no objection certificate create your pet passport for India.

I really appreciate all your help.

Thank You
Shamitha

Sorry cant offer any other help apart from shopping around and see if someone else can be paid to go and get it for you, try sending some emails to some of the Logistics companies, I am sure you can go get one to be your agent and get the form cheap for you in Delhi. Thats how I originally started my search to get the NOC, just sending emails.

You should take your cat in the cabin with you, he/she will be more comfy, just get one of the collapsible containers like we used, as you just push them under the seat for take off and landing and the rest of the time they can be out from under the seat. Plus you can make sure your cat gets some liquids this way during the flight and you can take it into a disabled restroom and let it out for a stretch and pee during your stopover.

Chris

I am moving to Delhi-India from the Tampa,USA . My pet cat about 4 yr old will accompany me as accompanied baggage .I can get these documents 1. Vaccination record including rabies vaccination 2. Export Health certificate which I will recieve 7 days before the date of departure 3. Certificate for Import of cat into India which I have downloaded off the internet and will get my vet to sign In order to get the NOC . The agents are charging too much for my cat. I dont have no one in India who can get NOC .And when I called Regional Officer (NR), Animal Quarantine and Certification Service Station,
Kapashera, New Delhi – 110 037,Phone No.: 0091-11-2506 3272,Fax No.: 091-11-2506 0647

He said to send my relative or friend in Delhi that they will getNOC for free. As NOC is issued by officer for free. But i dont know anyone in Delhi.How can I get NOC for my cat. Please help me or email me at …….@gmail.com

Oh and bring a can opener ! Some of the wet cat food doesnt have ring pulls, and the only can openers you can buy here are those old fashioned ones you stab the can with a blade. Plus if you want to make italian the imported crushed tomatoes are in can and you need an opener for those too!

Chris

Thank you again for your reply. I’m still in the process of deciding the “best” (which, in itself, is totally subjective and enigmatic) thing to do, talking with my US vet, my partner in India, and vets/expats with animals in Delhi. If I take the cats, I’ll surely follow your advice with water, litter, food, etc. Also, I’m preparing a “pet emergency fund” so I have the means to treat the cats if they’re sick or rush them back to US if needed. (Your pictures of the animal’s crates are invaluable, btw. I’m more of a visual learner )
An aside about water: Should the floors only be cleaned with mineral water as well, or, in your opinion, will an anti-bacterial cleaning agent negate the tap water? This may seem like a silly question, but I have been thinking about what would happen if the kitties stepped on the wet floors and then licked their feet, etc. I’m being a paranoid mommy, I know, but better safe than sorry. I guess I could always boil water before cleaning. I have read multiple times that “If you can’t drink the water, neither can your pet,” but, as you alluded, it’s near impossible to control all external factors.

I’ll be sure to update IM and let you know if the cats travel to India. A million thanks!

–dana

The problem we found here in Kolkata was the real lack of 2 things, decent pet food and vet services.

On the pet food front for a cat there is just some Whiskas satchels of wet food and dry food thats decent and even then you may see them in the store this week but not the next, it was only after we found a pet store that we could get them consistently. There is other brands of canned cat food, and dry cat food but compared to what we have in the USA, its really poor quality here and low in actual nutrients. Our cat didnt like it much at all no matter what we tried and he wasn’t a fussy eater before! We mostly fed him with a BARF diet and did it with chicken and fish. He actually like the frozen whitefish we could buy in the Spencers stores, it was expensive but he was happy.

Vet services, now in other cities it may and possibly is different. But here you go to a vet, there is little or any hygiene, and little to nil pet meds available. What you can get you have to hunt through many small drug stores to find as the vet wont keep stocks of drugs at all. They also are not trained at all to the same standards as we are used to, nor appear to have the same knowledge (we saw 3 different vets in India, all were the same). When you go there with a sick pet, of course its normal to get a blood test. Normally we would have the vet draw the blood and send it to the lab….but not in India, you have to take your cat to the lab yourself and get the blood drawn! The lab tech is not trained in animal husbandry and has no clue. So instead of traumatizing our poor George the cat, we moved him back to civilization asap. If we had of been able to catch it earlier, or probably not brought him to India he would still be with us as we would have been able to diagnose that he had got diabetes in the months he was here. of course being a cat he didnt show the symptons until it was too late, and the vet here thought we were crazy suggesting our cat was sick. They would take his temp, look at him and say he is fine…

Also in India should your pet die, in most cities there is no way to get the body cremated easily, in Kolkata its not possible at all, nor is there any pet cemeteries. That weighed on our minds a lot with old animals.

We also nearly had our 2 dogs die here in India, one dog got so sick that it was only through the help of the web and our vet in the USA that we were able to nurse her through it , but still when she got back to the USA she has bad kidney problems, so did the little on Moe, he too was really sick and needed lots of $$ spend getting them back to help. It was just stomach viruses they both had, probably from licking a puddle outside or something like that. But the vet response was when I called, if she is still alive on Monday bring her in and I will look at her then !!!! Really thats what one guy said, and he was meant to be the best in town!!

Be prepared to make sure your pets only drink mineral water here from day one, we would buy tons of liter bottles of Dasani, then we found we could buy it in cooler sized bottles for Inr80 a bottle.

If your cats are healthy with no abnormal things already wrong with them bring them with you, also make sure you have some extra meds, or the names and contents of the meds (as you can just walk into a drug store here and they will hand it over with no script). Just be really vigilant to make sure you watch what they eat and drink and they will be fine. To get the meds here in a drug store, have a copy of the box in hand or a printout of the contents for the web and hand it too them, they will find the same under a different brand here, although a lot of the time the drugs appear to be of very low quality.

Chris