Visas and Passports

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of our private tour of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan arranged by Aba Sayyoh Tour, Ltd. (M. Usuf st., office 6, 100077, Tashkent, Uzbekistan; phone +998 91 1632452, fax +998 71 2581686), whom we contacted six months before.

The land price for our 20-day trip, Sept. 12-Oct. 3, 2012, was $3,135 per person and included our accommodations, breakfasts, car with driver, English-speaking guides and entrance fees. I recommend Aba Sayyoh.

Cuban citizens now can travel abroad for up to two years using only their passports, though the passport price has doubled to $100. Prior to Jan. 14, they each had to also get approved travel permits (which cost about $300 total, equal to 15 months’ average salary) and could stay away only 11 months. They do still need to get visas for the countries they plan to visit.

Also, Cubans who left illegally more than eight years previously now will face no difficulties returning. Authorities hope that Cubans will study abroad, then return with income and expertise.

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the United States.) There are no restrictions on length. The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is GLORIA HELMUTH of Tulsa, OK:

The US Department of State continues to strongly recommend deferring all travel to Eritrea.

My husband and I found ourselves with three days’ notice to go on a trip to Southern Africa in October ’11. A pamphlet given to us by our travel agent stated that to go to South Africa, leave and reenter we each needed three sets of blank pages in our passports, each set to be two blank pages facing each other. We didn’t have enough blank pages in our passports or enough time to get more pages.

On the few blank pages we did have in our passports, my husband put Post-It® Notes, requesting, “Please do not use this page to stamp passport.”

On Sept. 15, following an attack on the Embassy in Khartoum, the Department of State ordered the departure of nonemergency US government personnel from Sudan. It urges avoiding all travel to the Darfur region and the Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states. The terrorist threat level throughout Sudan remains critical.

• On Sept. 12, the US Department of State ordered the departure of all nonemergency government personnel from LIBYA, following the attack on the US Diplomatic mission in Benghazi in which the American Ambassador was killed. Political violence subsequently increased in Benghazi and Tripoli.

• On Sept. 14, the US Department of State ordered the departure of all nonemergency government personnel from TUNISIA, following the attack on the Embassy in Tunis. At press time, it was warning against all travel to Tunisia.

(Part 3 of 3)

Shrouded chauffeur

A US citizen living in Argentina asked how many times additional pages can be added to an existing passport (July ’12, pg. 15). These “visa page inserts” each number 24 pages.

The US Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual, Volume 7 (1310 Appendix V), states, “The Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) recommends adding no more than two sets of visa page inserts to a passport for the reason that the added thickness may result in damage to the binding of the book during its validity.”

The excellent article about traveling by train from Vladivostok to Munich (July ’12, pg. 46) at a cost of $10,649 might lead some readers to believe that taking the train across Siberia is beyond their reach. It can be done much more cheaply, however. I traveled with a friend, Bob Geiman, from Beijing to Moscow in 2011.

In early May, the weather in Ulaanbaatar was cold and windy at times, with light snow flurries, but in Siberia it was perfect. We found the train not at all crowded in second class.