Visas and Passports

Uzbekistan was included in a trip to the ’Stans that my husband and I were planning to take in April 2016, so we applied for visas from the Uzbekistan Embassy in Washington, DC, mailing our applications and passports to them via the US Postal Service (USPS) on Jan. 27. We tracked them, and they arrived in two days.

On Feb. 9 we called the embassy and were told by a staff member that they had issued our visas on Feb. 4 and that the passports were on their way back to us. 

Then nothing.

Zimbabawe and Zambia have reintroduced the KAZA (Kavango-Zambezi) univisa — launched in 2014 and suspended in 2015 — which allows travelers to visit both countries for up to 30 days. Priced at $50, the visa also covers day-trippers entering Botswana at the Kazungula border (no overnight stays).

It is available on arrival at the international airports in Harare, Victoria Falls, Lusaka and Livingstone as well as at the land border crossings at Victoria Falls and Kazungula.

Visitors to China who first arrive in Shanghai by cruise ship each can receive a free 15-day tourist visa. The visa also allows travelers to continue to the cities of Beijing and Tianjin as well as ports of call in the coastal provinces of Liaoning, Heibei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan and Guangxi. 

My wife and I visited Uruguay and Paraguay, spending five days in each country, Dec. 5-17, 2016, and wanted to share some border entry improvements we encountered.

 Uruguay now has “Easy Airport” entry at Carrasco International Airport in Montevideo. No paper forms are required when going through Immigration. You just scan your passport, pose for a picture and scan your thumbprint, and you’re in. Same thing when departing. It was really fast, with very short lines. (Uruguay does not require a visa for most visitors, including US citizens.)

While planning a trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, I read Nylah Chilton’s letter about visiting that city for two days with Viking Ocean Cruises and not needing a Russian visa so long as she was on the cruise-tour operator’s organized shore excursions (July ’16, pg. 46). However, my wife and I decided to use a different approach, traveling to St. Petersburg independently by ferry from Helsinki, Finland, and taking advantage of Russia’s 72-hour visa-free rule.

Citizens of US, Canada and the UK visiting the Persian Gulf island nation of Bahrain had their allowed visit periods extended on Nov. 22, 2016. For those travelers, the amount of travel time allowed on a 5-year, multiple-entry visa (costing BHD174 [near $462]) has been extended from 30 days to 90 days per year. A visa-on-arrival (costing BHD25) has been expanded to one month.

Travelers of any nationality now can receive a 96-hour transit visa for Qatar. The traveler must be flying on Qatar Airways and have a layover of at least five hours at Hamad International Airport (HIA), near Doha, the capital; a passport valid for at least six months, and a ticket for an ongoing flight that is not to his origin city (for example, a JFK-HIA-JFK route would not qualify). 

It is a single-entry visa valid for 90 days.