First International Travel —Visa Process ( Part 1 )
Hello audience, how are we doing today? I am a bit excited because I just received my Visa and I was kind of getting worried that something might go wrong and my Visa application would get rejected. Anyway, I was planning to write this since the day I applied for the Visa so that I could help you folks out get your Visa next time you plan a visit abroad. This will be a short article as this will mention the documents that you will be asked to provide, the third party services that you may choose to use in order to get your Visa done on your behalf and so on. A thing to keep in mind is the fact that I was a student, about to finish my last year in college when I wrote this article. So the documents needed for the Visa process may differ a bit but don’t worry, I’ll tell you exactly what to do if your condition varies from mine. Also, I am an Indian, hence the procedure and documents needed in my case may differ if you happen to be from a different country.
Self help vs Proxy
There are two ways to getting your Visa approved — One way is to do the whole thing on your own, which involves filling up of forms and fetching the documents asked by the embassy all by yourself. This might work in your favor if you happen to live close to the embassy and you know what you are doing. The obvious advantage of this is you save a considerable amount of money right off the bat. But if you happen to be living far away and don’t have time to deal with the hassle, then leave it to the professionals.
The best thing to do is to check out the websites of well known travel agencies that engage themselves in this type of work. Examples of these would be:
These organizations usually have branch offices in large cities and these offices will be your point of contact for the whole process. So you submit and pick up your documents from whichever office falls closest to your location. As I am a student so I had to take this option as I simply didn’t have the know how or the time to deal with all the paper work. Now what you ideally should do is open up the Visa section in either of these websites and check the list of documents that will be needed by the Embassy for the country you are planning to visit. I was heading for Singapore so I opened this link and filled out the necessary details. Depending on the type of Visa you want, the documents required may vary. Now I felt a bit over-whelmed as this was my first time with all this so I thought the best thing to do would be to talk to someone from the branch office, hopefully, the person who will handle all this on my behalf. I suggest you do the same for two main reasons.
- This will help you ease out your worries and skepticism about he process.
- Not all the documents mentioned on the site are mandatory, few of them may be skipped and the agent would be the right person to tell you which documents you can do without.
The agent will tell you everything you need to know in detail and make sure to ask if you are not sure about anything because if you screw up, you’ll lose valuable time and money and the worst case would be you would have to give up your trip altogether.
Types of Visa
- Tourist Visa
- Business Visa
There are a couple more but the travel agent will most likely ask you to go for the Business Visa if you are planning to attend a summit like I am. But I insisted on getting the tourist visa instead as it was less of a hassle.
Documents needed
This section will talk about the mandatory documents that you will definitely need in order to get a Visa approval. I have also briefly mentioned how to arrange those documents. Keep in mind that the documents I had to submit were based on the fact that I was student when I wrote this article.
Note: All the documents that get issued from your department must have the department/college letter head and HOD signature to be considered valid.
- Invitation letter (Scanned copy/Print out)— This is the piece of document that will be sent by the inviting party from the country you are planning to visit. In my case it was FOSSASIA. The invitation letter should clearly mention the address of the place where you would be attending the summit and the dates of your stay.
- Passport (Original) — The passport should be valid for 6 months at least. By valid, I mean, it should not expire within 6 months of your Visa application date.
- Bank details (Original) — This is basically the bank statement of your account which will be generated on your request. You will need the original document that will be given to you by the bank ( the printout of the bank statement available via online banking will not be accepted ). Each page of your bank statement will be signed and stamped by the bank official, so there is no way around this. A problem that you might face is getting it from a branch which does not happen to be your home branch ( the branch where your account was created ). In this case, chances are the bank officials will ask you to write an application addressing the bank manager regarding the request. From here on, the process should be hassle free. By the way, the bank will charge you for every page they print. There is a minimum required balance that must be present in your account when you get your bank statement printed, in my case it was 60K INR. Make sure to ask your agent about this amount. After your bank statement gets printed out, you are free to withdraw this amount.
- College ID card (Scanned copy) —The ID card that has been issued to you by your college.
- PAN card (Scanned copy) — The Permanent Account Number card issued to your by the income tax department.
- Residence proof (Scanned copy) / bona fide resident certificate (Scanned copy) — This is the piece of document that will act as your proof of residence. In my case, I was living in a hostel, so I had to get it issued from the hostel office. Unfortunately the address mentioned in the certificate was not proper and complete, so I had to get a bona fide resident certificate issued from the department as well. Just go and ask the person handling the paper work in your hostel office, they’ll know what to do. Also, get the bona fide resident certificate issued from your department just to be on the safe side.
- No Objection Certificate (Original)— This document will again be issued from the department and usually the office folks will ask you to show them the invitation that you have received from the inviting party from Singapore. Make sure the address and dates of your visit are clearly mentioned in your NOC application.
- Father’s ID (Scanned copy) — In my case, this was needed as I was a student, hence I was not earning money at that time, so someone had to sponsor my trip to Singapore. Even though FOSSASIA was going to reimburse the travel expenses, the initial flight bookings were done at my own expense. Your father’s PAN / Aadhar card will be just fine.
- Father’s Occupation Proof (Scanned copy) — This will be a tricky document to produce if your father is not working in a government/private firm. But nevertheless, ask your travel agent about this, he’ll be able to help you out. This complication occurred in case of my friend, but the travel agent was able to help him out. My father works in a government firm, so he just asked the office folks of his firm and got the document issued. Again, the letter head of the firm must be present of this document.
- To and Fro Flight tickets (Scanned copy) — It is kind of stupid if you think about it; what if your VISA application gets rejected? The flight tickets go down the drain! But this is a risk everyone has to take. You have to get your to and fro flight tickets booked well ahead of time.
- 4 passport sized photos — The photos have very strict requirements and hence make sure to nail these requirements to the photo studio from where you are going to get yours done. The photos should be recent ( at most 6 months old ). The exact specs of the photographs are listed here. Be sure to mention to the photographer that you need your photo printed on matt finish paper and not the usual glossy digital paper. The matt finish photo will cost your more and is mandatory. I got myself 8 copies and I would advice you to get at least 8. You never know when you might need them.
- Cover letter — The cover letter is simply a typed letter that you address to the Visa Officer. You basically request him to grant you the visa approval. Clearly mention the purpose of your visit and the dates of your stay in the cover letter. The format and ready made content are available online so should be pretty easy to find.
If you happen to have any queries regarding the above documents, feel free to drop a comment. I’ll help you out as best as I can. Also, if you need document formats or samples, I may be able to do that for you too.
When should you apply?
To be very frank, I would say, take a margin of one month. I would like to mention an important incident that happened in my case. Knowing that Thomascook was a far bigger brand as compared to Make My Trip, I went for their service and I was lucky that I started the whole process 1 month earlier to my actual flight date. My Visa arrived just 2 days before my day of departure. The way everything was handled felt very unprofessional to me and to be honest, I think I would never use their service again. I would consider myself lucky that I somehow got my Visa approved just in time. So be sure to apply as early as possible. This also helps in case the embassy asks for more documents which may be a rare case but totally possible.
As of now I don’t have a video camera that could be used to vlog to be honest and I really wish to start vloggin real soon. Writing articles is enjoyable but I don’t think I am able to connect to my audience the way I want to. Plus, I am a bit shy on the camera, so vlogging will diffidently help me get over that. Anyway folks, I would definitely write about my trip to Singapore and this being my first trip out of the country, holds a very relevant place in my travel journal. Hope to see you guys again…
“A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.” — Tim Cahill
