Passport Problems

I'm asking for help and all you give me is papers...Paper, papers, papers!

~ The Consul, an opera about bureaucratic rigidity by Gian Carlo Menotti

My DH has been traveling on the same passport since 2010. He's used it to visit Amsterdam, the UK, France, Ireland, Japan, Bermuda, all over the Caribbean, the islands of the South Pacific, Mexico, Canada and Central America. The passport seems to work ok, but there's just one teentsy problem with it.

His name is spelled incorrectly.

The last time he had his passport renewed, it came back with a typo. They deleted one of the "L's" in his middle name. 

No worries. We just made sure to spell his name incorrectly when we booked international travel. That way everything matched up. 

But now that we have to get visas for the World Cruise, our misspelled chickens have come home to roost. To get a visa to visit India, he'll have to produce TWO forms of government issued ID's. His drivers license is correct, so it doesn't match his passport.

We must have a valid visas for India, Australia and Jordan prior to embarking the Pacific Princess in LA next January. The rest of the visas required for the trip will be handled by the cruise line at each port of call, but those three are special cases. We won't be allowed to board without them.

So, we're looking into making a special trip to the nearest US State Department passport office with his drivers license, birth certificate, baptismal records, Justice League of America Membership card--every snippet of documentation we can think of to support an extra "L." 

Once we straighten out this minor snafu, we'll start through the maze of red tape that is a visa application. It's probably a good thing that we have more than half a year before we sail.

Don't get me wrong. I believe all governments have the right to vet those who want to cross their borders.

It's just a shame that the lack of an "L" can mushroom into such a big deal.