Wheels up Sunday, 20 September 2026. A campus visit in West Bengal and three days with your parents in Bijapur stand between here and the gate. This is the running order for all of it — the domestic legs, the money, the paperwork, and the first week on the ground in San Francisco. Tick as you go; progress saves in this browser.
1. The nonstop to San Francisco is gone. Air India ended Bengaluru–SFO and Mumbai–SFO on 27 February 2026 and now flies to San Francisco from Delhi only. Every routing from Bangalore is one stop. Book today — ten days out on a US route, waiting costs real money.
2. The schedule has exactly one solution. Bangalore is pinned to 13–15 September, the only Sunday–Monday–Tuesday left. That puts Kharagpur on 11–12 September and Bijapur on 16–18 September, which is post-15th as you wanted. Do the forex card today, while you are in Bangalore on a working day — Ganesh Chaturthi closes the banks on Monday the 14th.
3. Return date still open. “By 30 November” means a ~10 week stay. If that is right, US housing is a sublet and not a hotel, and the travel insurance has to cover the full duration. If you meant a short trip, say so — half this list changes.
4. Thanksgiving is Thursday 26 November. SF shuts down 25–29 Nov. Plan to have every deal conversation closed by Tuesday 24 November.
Checked live for 20 September: Mumbai’s best one-stop is ₹78,736 at 22h15m. Bangalore’s comparable one-stop is ₹123,569, and its cheaper options run 27–30 hours. Pune has no one-stop at all. That ₹45,000 gap is far more than a positioning flight costs. There is no nonstop from any of the three — Air India ended Bengaluru–SFO and Mumbai–SFO on 27 February 2026, and United’s announced SFO–Bengaluru route was cancelled before it ever launched.
Mumbai on Sunday 21 September prices at ₹55,087 against ₹78,736 on the 20th. Bangalore on the 22nd is ₹59,276 against ₹123,569. Google flags the 20th as unusually high. One extra day at home buys you roughly ₹24,000 and a second buffer day — and costs one working day in San Francisco, which is a good trade this far from Thanksgiving.
Train 11140 runs Bijapur to Mumbai CSMT direct, so Mumbai needs no return through Bangalore — but you would have to pack for ten weeks before leaving Bangalore on the 15th and carry that luggage through Bijapur. If that will not work, come back to Bangalore on the 18th, pack at home on the 19th, and take an evening BLR–BOM positioning flight with an airport hotel. Never attempt a same-day domestic connection onto a long-haul on separate tickets.
Bangalore to Kolkata is a dense route with many daily departures. An early slot buys you the whole Friday afternoon on campus instead of arriving after dark.
140 km, roughly two and a half hours, around ₹4,000. Arrange it in advance rather than negotiating at the airport taxi stand after a flight. Book the return for Saturday at the same time.
An evening departure gives you the full campus morning and still puts you home in Bangalore the same night.
Overnight Volvo sleeper or train, roughly 10–12 hours. 81 daily services, but the good sleepers go early.
Gets you home Saturday morning with a clear buffer day before an international departure. Do not leave this to Saturday travel.
Construction was reported at 99% with operations targeted for Ugadi 2026, but final clearances were still pending as of August 2026. Worth one check before you book the Bijapur legs — if it has quietly opened with the planned Bengaluru service, both overnight journeys become short flights. Assume not.
You are in Bangalore on a working day. HDFC issues the ForexPlus card immediately at branch on document submission — this is now the fastest route, not the fallback. ICICI and SBI both issue genuine multi-currency cards too; go to whichever bank already holds your account, since KYC is done. Ganesh Chaturthi closes every branch on Monday the 14th, so today and Friday morning are your clean windows.
Existing HDFC customers are reported to be able to self-issue the card through netbanking in around five minutes. Free to attempt and it saves the trip — check your own netbanking before you get in a car.
BookMyForex delivers to the door the same working day across 20+ cities including Bangalore, seven days a week, for orders paid with documents in before 1 PM, and locks your rate for up to three days. Rates are usually better than a branch counter. Use it if the branch turns you away, or if you want a second card on a different rate.
You are away on the 11th and 12th, the 13th is a Sunday, the 14th is a public holiday. If today slips, Tuesday the 15th is the last working day before you leave for Bijapur — and you would be doing it in the middle of packing.
Niyo Global is a zero-markup debit card rather than a forex card, and account opening plus card delivery runs five to seven days. From the 10th that lands somewhere around the 17th at best, in Bijapur, with no recovery time. Worth having for future trips; not for this one.
US hotels and car rental desks place pre-authorisation holds that forex and prepaid cards routinely fail. Without a real credit card you can be refused at check-in holding a confirmed booking.
PAN, passport, the US visa page, and the SFO ticket. Loading foreign currency happens under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme and neither the online order nor the branch can process without all four. Scan them to your phone now — you will be on buses and trains for much of the next week.
Loading above a threshold per financial year attracts tax collected at source at 20%, which you later claim against income tax. The threshold has been revised recently and I would not trust a remembered figure — get the current number and your expected liability confirmed in writing before you load.
Ten weeks with rent, co-working and client meetings is a large number. Do not put all of it on one card at one exchange rate. Load part now, keep the rest reloadable from the app, and keep an Indian account funded and reachable from abroad.
One small transaction on each. A card that declines on day one in San Francisco, with the issuing branch twelve and a half hours behind you, is a genuinely bad week.
Short trip or 10-week stay. Every line below branches off this. Decide today.
Ten days out, fares climb daily. Buy a changeable fare or one-way — a 10-week trip will shift. Nonstop if the price gap is under ~$250; a 20-hour connection costs you a working day on both ends.
Passport valid at least six months past your intended exit, two blank pages. Confirm the visa class permits the full stay — B-1/B-2 is typically admitted for up to six months, but the actual duration is set by CBP on the I-94 at entry, not by the visa sticker.
Do not commit ten weeks to a place you have not stood in. Bridge with a serviced apartment or Airbnb for 14 nights, then sign the long sublet once you know which neighbourhood your meetings actually cluster in.
Warm list first — existing contacts, LinkedIn first-degree, investor and advisor intros. Specific dates convert far better than a vague “visiting soon”. Nothing else on this page matters if the calendar is empty when you land.
Non-negotiable. A single US emergency-room visit runs five figures. Minimum $100,000 medical cover plus emergency evacuation, and the policy period must span the entire stay. Compare SafetyWing, IMG Patriot and Genki against insurers in your home country — domestic policies are often materially cheaper for the same cover. Check the pre-existing-condition and adventure-activity exclusions before you buy.
Budget roughly $3,000–5,000/month furnished. Blueground, Landing and Furnished Finder do one-month minimums; Airbnb discounts 20–40% on stays of 28 nights or more. A full kitchen is a hard requirement, not a preference — see the San Francisco section below, where the neighbourhood advice has changed.
At this length a monthly membership beats day passes, and the room itself is pipeline. It also gives you a credible address to take meetings at instead of a rotation of coffee shops.
Create the account, then subscribe to the SF calendars rather than hunting event by event — Luma Discover filtered to San Francisco, plus the AI and founder calendars people in your space actually run. Turn on notifications and RSVP to your first fortnight now: the good rooms cap out and waitlist.
The a16z-run Tech Week typically lands in SF in early October, which falls inside your stay. It is several hundred parallel events on Luma over one week — the single highest-density customer-discovery window you will get. Confirm the 2026 dates and block the calendar.
File a travel notice with your bank, carry two cards on different networks (Visa and Mastercard are universal; Amex is patchy at small US merchants), and use a zero-forex-markup card. Add a Wise or equivalent multi-currency account as a backup. Tell the bank the stay is ten weeks so the fraud engine does not freeze you in week three.
An eSIM (Airalo, Holafly) covers the first few days. For a stay this long, switch to a US prepaid plan — Mint, US Mobile or T-Mobile prepaid — so you have a US number. Several US services and a lot of people will not text an international number.
40–60 named Bay Area accounts with the actual decision maker on each, ranked by buying signal. This is the long pole of the whole trip. Pull it from your CRM and prospecting data rather than assembling it by hand.
Calendly or Cal.com, availability set in America/Los_Angeles, with realistic travel gaps between slots. Put the link in your email signature before the outreach lands.
Carry the full ten weeks of any medication in original labelled packaging with a doctor’s letter — refilling a foreign prescription in the US is slow and expensive. Pack a basic kit; even over-the-counter medicine is priced painfully.
Border officers ask about a long business stay. Have ready, on paper and on your phone: return or onward ticket, employment or company letter stating the business purpose, proof of funds, accommodation confirmation, and any meeting or conference invitations. Your answer is business meetings and customer conversations — you are not being paid by a US entity.
Visa page, passport bio page, ticket, insurance certificate with the 24-hour assistance number, housing confirmation, invitation letters. Offline on the phone plus one printed set — airport wifi fails at exactly the wrong moment.
Pick the seat, and confirm the baggage allowance against what a ten-week stay actually needs.
A couple of hundred dollars in fives, tens and twenties for tips and the handful of cash-only places. The US tips: 18–20% at restaurants, a few dollars for a driver.
San Francisco is 12–20°C year-round, windy, and genuinely cold once the fog comes in — layers and a real jacket, not summer clothing. By November add rain. Bring Type A/B plug adapters (US mains is 120V) and a laptop charger you have tested.
Anything time-critical at home needs an owner for ten weeks. Note in the auto-reply that you are on Pacific time so nobody reads a 14-hour delay as being ignored.
Departure-side pickup, and know how you get from SFO to the door — BART runs from the international terminal into the city and is fastest at rush hour; a rideshare is easier with heavy luggage.
Get to the apartment, buy groceries, sleep on local time. Do not schedule anything for Sunday evening.
Do it on day one. Then update the number on your booking link and email signature.
Clipper card in Apple or Google Wallet covers Muni, BART and Caltrain. Rideshare for anything with a hard start time; skip the rental car unless your meetings are South Bay-heavy.
Cluster the day geographically — SF downtown, Peninsula, or South Bay, never a mix. Four meetings a day is the realistic ceiling once Bay Area traffic is priced in.
Cold pipeline starts in rooms, not inboxes. Founder dinners and small topic-specific meetups convert far better than large conferences.
Y Combinator is at 560 20th Street in Dogpatch, on the eastern waterfront at Pier 70. Potrero Hill sits directly uphill — ten to fifteen minutes down to YC on foot, with the 22nd Street Caltrain station between the two neighbourhoods and the T-Line Muni into downtown for evening events. It is the one location that serves all three of your constraints at once. Stay uphill in Potrero Hill rather than down in Dogpatch itself, which is still half warehouse conversion. Note that an earlier draft of this page recommended SoMa and the Mission for startup density — that was wrong for you, and those, with the Tenderloin, are the corridors to avoid.
Potrero Hill and Dogpatch are a real step down in safety from Inner Richmond or Inner Sunset, which record among the lowest violent-crime rates in the city alongside Noe Valley, Twin Peaks, the Presidio and Sea Cliff. Dogpatch rates safe overall with crime broadly typical for San Francisco, but ranks #70 of 116 neighbourhoods with crime density 54.5% above the regional median, and the area borders Bayview to the south. The citywide trend is with you — violent crime down 19% and property crime down 25% through the first half of 2025, on top of 2024 being the lowest in two decades. If proximity to YC turns out not to matter, the Richmond and the Sunset remain the safer choice.
It sits between Potrero Hill and Dogpatch, below the I-280 viaduct, and runs direct to Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto. That turns the South Bay — where the Jain restaurants, the grocers and the Jain Center of Northern California in Milpitas actually are — into a train ride rather than a car rental. It is the single feature that makes this location work for you rather than against you.
New India Bazar and A&D Nepali/Indian Grocery are across the city in the Richmond and the Sunset. From Potrero Hill a Jain kitchen means one deliberate weekly run or standing delivery orders. Annoying, and the honest price of being near YC. Sort the delivery accounts in week one rather than improvising every Sunday.
Living near the building does not get you inside it. What helps is the density of YC-backed startups in that corridor and the events they run, most of which surface on Luma wherever you sleep. If being near YC is about reaching customers, Potrero Hill is the right call. If it is about getting into YC, the address will not do that work.
Ten weeks of Jain food in the United States is not survivable on restaurants. This settles the hotel-versus-sublet question for good: you need a furnished apartment with a full kitchen, and you should confirm the hob, the fridge and the basic utensils in writing before you pay a deposit.
Onion and garlic are in nearly everything, including most Indian restaurant food. Root vegetables are ubiquitous and shared fryers are standard. Assume you are cooking most meals, and treat anything eaten out as an exception you negotiated in advance.
New India Bazar is the city’s oldest Indian grocer, running more than thirty years. A&D Nepali/Indian Grocery sits in Inner Richmond. Between them you can stock a Jain kitchen without leaving the city, which is the main reason those two neighbourhoods win.
Udupi Palace is fully vegetarian. Amber India, Chaat Corner, Besharam and Shizen will generally do Jain preparation if you ask specifically and in advance. Sahjanand Catering runs dedicated Jain catering in San Francisco — call them about a standing weekly arrangement before you arrive, because that covers the meeting-heavy weeks when you will not cook.
The Jain Center of Northern California is in Milpitas and carries over 2,200 member families. The real Jain restaurant clusters are Fremont, Milpitas, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara — 45 to 70 minutes from the city. Worth one deliberate trip early in the stay whether or not you base there.
Your diet and community point to the South Bay. Your customer-discovery plan points to San Francisco, where the startup density, the Luma events and the founder dinners are. If your ICP is enterprise or big tech, basing in Sunnyvale or Fremont gives you customers, food and community together, with Caltrain covering the city events. If your ICP is early-stage startups, take the Richmond or the Sunset and accept that you cook. This decides where you live for ten weeks — settle it before you sign anything.
San Francisco is at its lowest crime levels in 23 years and runs roughly 4% safer than the US average. The problem is concentrated in specific corridors rather than general, which is exactly why neighbourhood choice matters more than city choice. Normal urban caution after dark, and never leave anything visible in a parked car — that one is genuinely endemic.
Same-day note with a concrete next step. A ten-week trip generates more conversations than you will remember by Friday.
“Who else should I be talking to while I’m here?” Warm intros compound; by week four they should be outproducing your cold outreach.
Meetings held, opportunities opened, what moved. Ten weeks is long enough to drift for a fortnight without noticing.
Q1 budget planning is live and buyers are receptive. Everything must be signed or clearly committed by Tue 24 Nov — Thanksgiving takes the rest of the month.
Photograph every receipt the day you get it. Reconstructing ten weeks of business travel spend in December is misery and you will lose deductions.
Check your admitted-until date on the CBP I-94 site after you land — it is the date that legally governs your stay, and it is not always what you assumed. Overstaying voids the visa.