India eVISA

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eVisa …. the easier way to get to India (sort of)
Image courtesy of the Government of India

When I first started thinking about a trip to India I started reading quite a bit on the trip advisor forums and other peoples blogs. One thing that came across loud and clear, especially in the past, was how difficult some people were finding it to obtain a VISA.

Who needs a VISA to get into India

Basically everybody is required to have a VISA to enter India. As of October 2019 only 2 countries are allowed to obtain a VISA upon arrival – citizens of Japan and Korea. All other nationalities require a VISA in advance. Some of these citizens need to apply at an India embassy, however many countries can now apply online for an eVISA.

eVISA website and price list

You will find the site here : https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html
And the price list : https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/images/Etourist_fee_final.pdf

Too early or too late

You can apply for an eVISA from 120 days up until 4 days from your expected date of arrival. I can only speak from other posts I have read where people claim they were rejected for applying too early (around the 120 days mark).
I consider 4 days to be much too late (although I do tend to be a planner rather than a last minute kind of person) so I decided 60 days seemed to make sense.

Payment

Payment is made in US dollars and they accept VISA and Mastercard. As far as I could tell they do not accept American Express. The actual process of paying with a foreign card was really smooth and I had no issues at all.

The process

Before we start, I want to also give a bit of a warning. I am learning that things change frequently in relation to VISAs in India (and probably most other bureaucratic processes) so this information is valid as of October 2019.

VISAs are supposed to take up to 72 hours to process. VISAs issued online are valid from the time the application is approved. This means if you apply for a one year VISA on November 1st 2019 and it is approved on November 2nd 2019 it will be valid until November 2nd 2020. This is different than some VISAs that are only activated once you first enter the country. For this reason – especially if applying for a 30 days VISA – do not apply too early.

You will need a picture of yourself and a copy of your passport. The picture needs to be in JPG (most camera phones will give you this) and be a maximum of 1MB. This means you may need to use some software on your computer to crop and compress it or the website will not allow you to upload it. The copy of your passport must be in PDF format (most scanners will give you this) and can only be a maximum of 300kb. I find this size to be quite small and you may need to adjust the quality setting on your scanner software to get this to work. I found that my Macbook has a nice tool to compress a PDF (once you find it).

Other than the size constraints, the only other issue I had was the fact that the application asked for all the countries visited in the last 10 years. If you have traveled a lot the form maxes out after 20 countries. I am not sure about the official way to solve this, but I entered the 20 most recent countries.

Conclusion

Overall, except for the interesting maximum sizes of documents, the process is fairly painless and the response seems to be fast – mine was approved within 24 hours.

Sensō-ji

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On our first full day in Tokyo we decided to go and see Sensō-ji in the Asakusa area. Navigating the metro was fairly easy and it’s very efficient. Sensō-ji itself is a lovely temple right in the middle of a large metropolitan area. It can be a fairly relaxing place, however it is often quite busy.

On the day we arrived there were large groups of school children. On the approach to the temple is a shopping street selling the usual tourist fare and it was fairly packed with children trying to find good deals to spend their yen. 

 
Off on the side streets you will find a much quieter and more relaxed environment and some smaller shrines.
 
This one called Otanuki-sama which is a kind of Racoon dog. It’s supposed to protect people from fire and theft. If you have small change you can make a donation here and ring the bell.
From here,if you head across the river, you will see the Tokyo skytree as well as this golden colored object which apparently represents a cloud – although other people seem to think it looks like other things!

Belize bus travel

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Belize is a small country. You can pay a lot of money for a private transfer or you can do as the locals do and take the bus. How difficult this is depends on where you are traveling from and where you are going. It also depends on the day. I chose to travel on a holiday – this made things more difficult. 

To start with, this is the bus. They are old school buses, just like in Guatemala. The difference is, these are quite safe. Always keep an eye on your wallet, but otherwise it was just fine. 
There is normally a bus leaving Hopkins but on a holiday there was none. So I took a taxi to the junction of the highway. Buses in Belize stop when you raise your hand. If you wait on the side if the highway a bus will come along eventually. 
The bus took me to Belmopan, which is the capital. At this point I ran into trouble. There were buses going West towards San Ignacio, but because of the holiday there was a shortage of buses and an abundance of people. Fortunately I met a local who negotiated a taxi to take us the last 45km or so. 
We passed the bus along the way. By the way, this is the state of the highway going towards Guatemala. It’s being resurfaced, but it’s not in very good condition right now. 
The view out of the bus going through the mountains. Do know that you are not guaranteed a seat 🙂
I think if you are traveling in a group then driving in Belize is probably your best option. But if you are traveling alone then the bus is fine (and really cheap) – you just need to be patient.