When our upcoming trip to India was looming, one of the biggest hurdles to over come, as anyone who has been before will tell you, is applying for the Visa. We attempted to tag an impromptu visit to India onto the end of our 6 month trip around Asia a couple of years ago but found it just too hard to get the Visa on the road so had to give up and we headed to Nepal instead...which coincidentally we loved and I would highly recommend! However, in the few years between the two trips some changes have come into play that finally offer an easier option, UK citizens can now finally apply for an e-Tourist Visa...it’s been open to lots of countries before but it’s only opened up to the UK in more recent times. The e-Tourist Visa will give you up to 30 days in India, if you want to stay for longer you will still need to go down the traditional route but for us this time 30 days is the perfect amount of time. You need to send in your application a maximum of 30 days before you are planning to travel and a minimum of 4 days before hand so sometime in that window will be the time to get it sorted. Also you will have to be arriving at one of the 16 designated airports - Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bengaluru, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Gaya, Goa, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Tiruchirapalli, Trivandrum & Varanasi but you can depart from any Immigration Check Post. If you are arriving somewhere else or by other means you will probably have to go through the tradition Visa application route. I began filling in the online forms and soon realised I was pretty confused...parts of the form are quite cryptic and I found myself Googling a lot of questions as the ‘help guide’ on the Visa site wasn’t helping me where I needed. So after making my way through the form and a successful application I thought I would do a quick help post to help others in the same situation. Firstly make sure you are applying for the Visa through the correct website...there are lots of cheeky sites out there claiming to be the real deal but they aren’t, they are ‘agent’ sites which will charge you more money and you can’t be 100% sure that what you are getting is the real deal. Head for the Indian Visa Online website here - https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/index.html and you will see the e-Tourist Visa option on the left hand side...this is where you want to apply (https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/tvoa.html). The page you are taken up to will look like this:
The homepage of the genuine e-Tourist Visa website You’ll have to prepare a few bits before you can fill out the application. - A PDF scan of the photo page of your Passport saved between 10 KB and 300 KB in size. - A Passport photo with white background, needs to be square, so equal dimensions. Mine was 531 x 531 pixels. Normal conditions apply – full face, eyes open, head in the center, no shadows. Minimum file size is 10 KB and Max is 1 MB. - Also make sure you know your parent's towns of birth as per their Passports as you will need this too. Once you have all of that ready to go then click the Application button. The first screen will look like this:
The first page contains fairly standard questions, so hopefully no problems there!
The second page is where you might have some questions. The main ones probably being...
- Citizenship/National Id No. – This is not relevant for those of us in the UK so put NA as your answer to this one if you are a UK citizen.
- Visible Identification Marks – This stumped me but after further investigation it turns out it is referring to whether you have anything such as a visible birthmark or tattoo, if you don’t then you can fill this in with NONE
Page two
The third page is reasonably straight forward, it requests your parents Places of Birth and your occupation. The drop down list of occupations is not very extensive so just aim for the nearest.
Also watch the radio button at the bottom that asks if you were/are part of the Military / Police etc as it is automatically set to yes, so if it’s no then make sure you change it.
Final page now...almost there!
- Places likely to be visited – If you have a rough itinerary of places you want to visit just pop a few of them in i.e - Chennai, Hampi, Kerala, Mumbai etc - Countries visited in the last 10 years – I started working my way through my list and then about six countries in I ran out of space, so maybe just include the most recent places - SAARC Countries visited – I had never heard this term before so had no idea what it meant but I can confirm SAARC Countries include: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. So if it’s a yes then change the radio button and pop in the details - Reference name in India – Despite how it reads it's doesn't mean someone in India who can vouch for you it means where you will be staying. If you will be moving around just write down the details of the first hotel you will be staying at when you arrive - Reference name in United Kingdom – Just write down someone at home who can be contact in emergencies, parent, family member, friend etc.
Not the clearest form but easy when you know how!
After these pages it is then down to uploading you photo and passport, then paying the $60 USD fee, oddly there are two payment options to choose from: SBI and Axis, my understanding was that Axis is a worldwide bank where as SBI is an Indian based payment gateway. I used Axis and had no problems. Then hopefully it is just a case of waiting to receive an email letting you know if it was successful. I hoped that helped! NEXT STEPS - Book accommodation for your trip here
- Purchase the Lovely Planet for India here
