Visa Woes — Light at the end of the tunnel

I have been working on my Visa for India for 3 months now, and I finally got it submitted this week! I can’t believe how much of a stressful experience this has been. I actually had nightmares of me being the only person on my team to not get their Visa and somehow I was going to get left behind. Pretty sure there is a story here that ties to a missed childhood trip to Disneyland that was caused by missed paperwork deadlines.

There are just so many rules and requirements, and they vary from country to country and even state to state! My team of 18 people have all had different requirements. First you need an invitation letter from the country you are going to, and the cover letter from your home country. They have such nit-picky things like the address in the header has to match this box on that form, and it has to be in the embassy’s jurisdiction. Then the dates, what a nightmare on the dates! They have to match in the two letters, and it doesn’t seem to matter that they aren’t the actual dates you will be in the country.

Luckily, there is a light at the end of the tunnel now! I finally got my Visa submitted. The visa company I went through, CIBT, has reviewed all the documents and they say the papers look good. They should be submitting to the Embassy today, and they say that the Embassy process time is 10 days, but lately they have been getting them in just a 2–3 days! Woo Hoo! I will be so happy to have this weight off my shoulders.