If you are planning to visit India, you will need to get a visa to enter the country. This is normal for many countries; however, the process for the Indian Visa is sometimes not as simple as you may hope for.
A visa for travel is an official document that allows the visitor to legally enter a foreign country. The visa is usually stamped or glued into the holder’s passport. Aah, remember passport stamps, that glorious collection of coloured reminders of the places you’ve been. Now with e-gates in many countries, those pages of your passport remain bare, where once they would have been filled with ink.
Almost everyone needs a visa to visit and travel in India. But for most nationalities a tourist visa is easy to get. Citizens of 164 countries – including New Zealand, Australia, UK, US, most nations in the EU and many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East – can apply for an e-Visa for India before traveling.
What is an e-Visa and how does that work for India?
An e-Visa for India is an electronic visa application. Back in the day, the only way to apply for a visa for travel meant visiting an embassy or consulate to receive a hard-copy visa directly in your passport. Now it is possible to apply for an Indian e-Visa, which, if successful, grants you authorisation to enter India by applying online. All this from the comfort of your own house.
So, what do you need before you apply for your Indian e-Visa?
You need some patience. Okay, you need lots of patience!
Our application process for the two Visas, which had to be filled in separately, took almost three hours! So grab a drink as well! Or maybe two!
First you need to prepare a few specific documents and information.
DOCUMENTS:
- Passport photo: A recent passport photo of yourself that is at least 10KB and a maximum of 1MB. The photo must show the full face with a white or light-coloured background. The photo must be in JPEG format. When you go to upload this, it then gets cropped anyway, so don’t panic too much when taking the shot.
- Scanned Passport ID Page: Scanned ID page of your passport in PDF format. Size must be between 10KB and 300KB.
INFORMATION:
- Contact in India: In the application, you will be asked to provide information about a reference name in India. If you don’t have a personal contact in India, you can use the name and address of your first accommodation in India. The form is fun at this point as the required fields, marked with red asterisks, only seem to want a name. As you try to move on, you will also need the address and phone number.
Note also that your passport needs to be valid for six months beyond the date of entry and you need two spare pages for the visa, which will be physically stamped into your passport on your arrival in India.
How long is the visa valid for? How long can you stay in India?
Tourist e-Visas for India are available for 30 days, 1 year or 5 years, with the 1- and 5-year visas allowing for multiple entry.
How to apply for an India e-Visa online
There is only one official website to get an Indian e-Visa provided by the Government of India. However, many sites claim to be able to process your application. Make sure you follow the correct link. I’d also avoid sites that claim to speed up or streamline the process, as they often charge for forms that you can complete yourself.
On the website homepage click on the ‘Apply here for e-Visa‘ tab on the bottom left of the screen.
e-Visa Application
Fill out the first page with generic information about yourself as well as your email address. This is where you will receive the e-Visa. This bit is simple and painless, then the fun begins. Select your Visa type based on the duration of your stay. At this point, for us, the web page kept crashing and would not allow us to move forward. I’m sure at one point, a little mushroom cloud appeared over our house. I was using my Mac and Safari as the browser, the website doesn’t like this combination! I switched to using Chrome, and things improved; still not perfect, but workable.
Applicant Details
The second page of the application asks you to fill in more information about yourself. This is all fairly standard, although at times it does seem repetitive and often irrelevant.
You may type “None” next to ‘Visible Identification Marks’ if you do not have any to note. If you have several scars, tattoos, etc, the box will not be big enough to enter your details, just use the most obvious items.
Take note of the Temporary Application ID number that pops up at this stage (just in case you hit save and exit the application by mistake or the website crashes and you need to try to get back in). You will need this to log back in if you exit the page.
On the third page, you need to fill in all the current information about your present and permanent address. You need to provide your family information (Mother and Father’s details) as well as your occupation and marital status. The occupation drop-down list is interesting. I could have been a bus driver, cameraman, or journalist, but not a teacher. No, teacher does not appear on the list, well not unless you select the “other” option, then a second list appears.
You are also asked on this page if your parents or Grandparents (paternal or maternal) are of Pakistani heritage. I know mine aren’t, so all was good here.
India Travel Plans
This page requires information about your travel plans in India including your expected Port of Arrival, planned Port of Exit and places you have previously visited in India.
Under ‘Other Information’, you are also required to list all the countries you have visited in the last 10 years. I started with our most recent and worked back from there. Wow, it’s quite a list!
The next step asks if you have visited SAARC countries during the last three years. SAARC stands for South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and has eight member countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). You will need to list any of these if you have visited recently. I had to check my list here, as we visited Sri Lanka a few years ago, luckily, it was outside the three year window.
You also need to name a reference in India and a reference name in your home country. As I mentioned earlier, this part can be fun because the required boxes, marked with red asterisks, change as you fill them in! A quick look at your hotel website should get you the details you need.
Declarations
This page asks about any criminal records. Note that all the answers are “Yes” by default. Make sure to read the page carefully and click the box for “No” to each of them.
Tick the bold declaration at the end of the page and press ‘Continue’. Hopefully, your browser is behaving and you don’t lose everything and have to start again.
Upload Documents
After the above step you will be asked to upload your photos.
First upload the passport image (photo) and press “Continue”. This is where you get to crop the image, I had to retake my photo as it wouldn’t sit nicely in the box. Passport photos can be so unflattering!
Next, on a different page, you will be asked to upload a photo of your passport ID page.
After the uploads are complete, the next step is the payment of the e-Visa fee.
Online VISA Fee Payment
Check and read the information before selecting “Yes” and “Pay Now”. Be sure to record or screenshot the Application ID, as you will need this number to check the payment status (and for trying again if the first payment doesn’t go through!).
You will be redirected to the payment page, where you can make your e-Visa payment using a debit or credit card or PayPal. Note that the payment must be made at least 4 days before your expected date of travel, or your Indian e-Visa application will not be processed. There is a 2.5% bank charge for payments made on the website, in addition to the e-Visa fee.
The payment for the Indian e-Visa is non-refundable, whether or not your application is successful.
This was fun as well. At this point, the website again proved to be a little flaky and wouldn’t initially accept payment. Three tries later, all was good.
Application complete
Congrats! You have just completed the process of applying for your Indian e-Visa! And you have definitely earned that drink!
Now all you need to do is wait (processing time up to 72 hours) until you receive confirmation – and hopefully your Indian e-Visa – to the email address you supplied on Page 1. When you receive your Indian e-Visa it is titled as an ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation). Make sure you double check all details are correct and that the Date of Expiry of ETA is beyond your expected date of arrival in India.
How long does it take to receive the visa after applying?
It states on the official website that it takes up to 72 hours to process, so be sure to apply in plenty of time (at least more than 4 days in advance).
But in fact, it took only 24 hours for my Indian e-Visa to be granted. Helen’s, on the other hand, took the full 72 hours to come through. When we did get the emails, there was no Visa attached, though, just a confirmation that the visas had been granted. I had to log back into the visa website, where you can find another link to check your visa status. After entering my details, I was then shown a link to download the visa. Yes, all very straightforward, isn’t it…
Do I need to print my India e-Visa?
Yes. You do need to print your India e-Visa. You are required to bring a printed copy of your e-Visa when you enter India. I have printed copies as well as the PDF saved to my phone. Hopefully from here as is smooth sailing, I suppose we’ll find out in Friday mornkng when we land in Chennai
Next step is the Malaysian Arrival form
Next, we have the Malaysian arrival form, which appears to be straightforward.
OMG !!!!!