I love maps. I also love coloring in the maps to show where I've been because it gives me a weird sense of accomplishment. Which I guess makes sense if "world traveler" is one of the phrases I would use to define myself, but probably still pretty annoying to everyone around me.
But anyway, the last couple of weeks have been full of the unsexy part of traveling - visa applications. I'm off to India in a few weeks for a tiger safari (!!!!), so this past weekend I started my electronic visa application. It wasn't a big deal as far as visa applications go, at least until I got to this question:
Surely they had to be joking. Figuring this could take longer than expected I started filling it out, but before I even finished 2014 I ran out of space. But, this scary question aside, the Indian visa application system was a breeze and I already have my electronic visa all ready for my trip.
In sharp contrast to India are Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, two of the hardest countries in the world to get visas to. I'm traveling with my dad there this summer, so in addition to my own visa, I'm also trying to make sure he can get one as well since there are some concerns about his ability to get a visa due to his age.
Turkmenistan you can get a visa on arrival (supposedly), but first you have to get a Letter of Invitation from the government. Our tour company is working on that and I have my fingers and toes crossed that on arrival in Turkmenistan it all actually works (at least my dad and I are flying into Turkmenistan together, so if we get stuck or have problems we'll be together). Apparently someone from our tour company is going to have to meet us at immigration and shepherd us through the process, since the government wants to ensure that no one visits the country without a tour guide.
Uzbekistan has turned out to be a way bigger hassle. If you're an American citizen living in America, you just send your passport off to the Uzbek embassy (or hire a visa company to do it for you) and in a few weeks you get your passport back with a shiny new visa, which is what my dad is doing. But if you're not living in America and not willing to send your passport off for a month or so, it means you have to find an Uzbek embassy or consul which, as you can imagine, there are not a lot of. And if you're applying for a visa outside of the US, you need a Letter of Invitation from the government, which makes no sense because I'm still American regardless of where I'm living. And to get a Letter of Invitation you need a letter from your employer stating where you work and that you're only going to Uzbekistan for vacation and not for work and that you plan on returning to work after the vacation, which was a whole other hassle.
After a lot of research and phone calls to my tour company, a visa company and the Uzbek embassy/consul, this is my current plan: apply for Letter of Invitation (done); receive Letter of Invitation; fly to Dubai on a Sunday in April (the consul is only open Sunday, Tuesday and Thursdays from 9-12); cross fingers and hope that nothing goes wrong and that I'm able to leave Dubai that same day with a visa. I've also booked our plane tickets (a whole other clusterfuck...you have no idea how difficult it is to find flights out of Uzbekistan), so I'm really really really hoping we don't have visa difficulties.
While going through this whole ridiculous process, I kept thinking to myself "Why?!?!?" and "This trip damn well better be worth it." It's not like there's a ton of Americans trying to sneak into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for job opportunities. It's not like their economies couldn't desperately use some additional tourism revenue, not to mention some good publicity with Western tourists. And if I wasn't so determined to see these countries and the Silk Route, I would have given up long ago. So what does deterring travelers and all the additional bureaucracy and paperwork really give these countries? Other than more jokes for Borat...
And finally, as a result of all these new visas, I've run out of pages in my 2 year old passport. So yesterday I schlepped on down to the US Embassy here in Muscat for them to do some shoddy arts and crafts on my passport:
Seriously, they just glued random pages into the beginning and end of my passport. It looks like I did it myself and the damned thing doesn't even close now unless I hold it or stick something heavy on top of it. Here's hoping I can actually get through immigration with it...
So yeah, I love traveling. And the thought of going somewhere as wild and unexplored as Central Asia thrills me to the core. But the visa processes can be monstrously time consuming, annoying and, ultimately, expensive. And after all this work and effort, I'm not even positive that we'll be able to get visas, since we think they could be worried that my retired dad is trying to sneak into one of the 'stans for job opportunities (because that's totally logical for a happily retired American to do).
