Indian Visa on Arrival. Kind of.
I’ve been to India before. For work. The visa process is complicated and time consuming. It took two trips to the visa processing centre, and I needed a letter from my employer in India, and my employer in Australia. And because I am a US citizen living in Australia, that doubled the estimated four day turnaround time.
When we planned this trip three months ago, I was super excited to read that India just started offering tourist visas on arrival for US citizens. Fast forward three months. We were using a bunch of frequent flyer miles that were about to expire, so we were flying business class on Thai Airways. We bypassed the long check in line and rocked up to the check in counter. Thumbing through my
passport, the check in agent asks, “do you have a visa for India?” Um… hrmm… isn’t it visa on arrival? Apparently this does not mean what we think it means.
In fact, you need to start WAY before arrival. 4 days in fact. The wouldn’t let us board the flight without the visa confirmation. We were a bit screwed.
Our plan was to quickly submit the application online, board the flight to Bangkok, and hang out there until the visas cleared. You know those people at immigration who are in the “special” area and look like they’ve been there for a while? I had visions of that being us.
The online form required visa photos (which we quickly took using our cell phone and edited in photoshop to match the specifications), a scan of the photo page of our passports (which we also created via iPhone), and also a listing of countries visited in the past 10 years. This last one would have been problematic except the field had a 100 character limit. We submitted the form and
hoped for the best.
We were only checked in as far as Bangkok, so once we hit the lounge, I quickly booked at room at the Hilton and canceled our room and car service for Delhi. When we landed in Bangkok, we cleared immigration (“How long do you plan to be in Thailand?” “Um, until India gives us visas?”), retrieved our bags, and wandered a bit to find wifi. By some miracle, we both had “your visa has been granted” emails ! We quickly made our way to the checkin counter for the connecting flight, and then headed to the lounge to print the confirmation emails. We also canceled the Bangkok hotel and rebooked the Delhi hotel. Sheesh !
Arriving in Delhi was one of the most efficient immigration experiences we’ve encountered. We followed the signs to Visa on Arrival. We produced the printed confirmation, and two minutes later we were stamped. Couldn’t have been easier. Well, that part at least. So if you are a US citizen, travelling to India, here’s the process:
- About two weeks prior to departure, complete the online form.
- You will receive the confirmation that the visa has been granted within 72 hours. Ours took 10 hours. Print the confirmation email and take it with you to the airport (you need to show it when you check in).
- When you land, follow the signs to the “Visa on Arrival> area. In Delhi, it is past all of the other counters and the desks are white with blue signage.
- Present your passport and the confirmation email
Even though this takes a small amount of planning, it is much better than the old process.
