Now that I’m within a month of departure, it’s visa time!
This trip doesn’t require anywhere near the same level of hoop-jumping as my Silk Road trip did last summer, thank goodness. But I still need to get my hands on a few. Luckily, for this trip, all of them can be obtained electronically or on arrival.
The Indian electronic tourist visa application was interesting, to say the least. For one thing, you have to wonder how the same form can be at once progressive enough to include a third gender option, and yet regressive enough to ask me for my religion. It’s a bit of a cultural window into India, I suppose, as is the amount of bureaucracy that India is (in)famous for: The five-page form also asked for my occupation, my education level, my parents’ places of birth, and all the countries I visited in the last 10 years. (Yes, I ran out of space trying to answer that that last question.)
It was processed fairly quickly, but the approval email was sent to me in quintuplicate. I don’t even think quintuplicate is a real word!
Turkey’s visa process was fully online, too, and relatively simple compared to India’s. But this one irked me a bit, since I’ll be spending less than 24 hours in the country, and at $60 USD, it’s the most expensive visa of the trip! However, without it, I’d end up spending the night on the airport floor, so I didn’t have much choice but to suck it up. Oh well, at least I’ll hopefully get a few hours of sightseeing in for the price.
The one visa I haven’t applied for yet is the Nepalese one, since I’m told it’s easily available on the border. That seems easier than making a trip to Ottawa to apply at the Consulate.
The Netherlands, of course, requires no visa. Yay Schengen! Yay Eurozone! (And, boo, silly Brexiters who don’t appreciate how good they have it. But that’s a rant for a different day.)
Visas are all set. Is it time to go yet?