Sri Lanka - visa advice various

woodlouse

Soon to be leaving sri lanka for india after 2 wonderful and strange months

some info on visas

sri lanka visa extension:
tourists are automatically issued with a months visa on arrival.
to extend your visa either do it in your own country before you go or do it in bambalapitya in colombo. if you do it in colombo, you should go in the morning as applications are not accepted after 12.30. take exact fee in sri lankan rupees

getting india visa in sri lanka:
to get india visa in sri lanka, you can go to indian embassy in colombo or kandy.
applications (for uk nationals) can take 5 days to process. eg - go in monday at 9am.
you need 2 passport photos, your travel itinerary for india, copies of flight tickets, 2 copies of your passport. pick up application form plus application form for non residents.
you may then have to pay fee for application to be faxed - about 250 Rs
when you come back in 5 days you pay visa fee in the morning, then leave passport and come back in afternoon to get finished visa.

lonelyaztec

In Srilanka, u can get visa on arrival.

Tourist visa is for 1 month only.

I am not sure about Indian visa extension. Anyone local, travel agent should be able to help you.

__________________
Aztec

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Puck

I hope at least some of that is wrong 'cos I've a flight out at 2 PM the day they advised me to pick up my new visa!

Seriously -- my own experience differed in detail. Based on personal experience of HCI Colombo (Kandy might be a pleasanter option), I'd advise anyone planning a Sri Lankan trip including getting an Indian tourist visa ...

Before going to the High Commission for India in Colombo, visit www.hcicolombo.org to a) check for holidays and b) download both forms. If you don't do a) then, at worst you could go on Sri Lankan New Year week so it takes 9 elapsed days to get the requisite 5 working days [I've just done it -- duh!]

I didn't follow the advice above and ended up filling in the form (handed out by the security/door people) in the queue. Hence some vagueness ...

As well as the questions I remember from HCI London they also asked for previous passport details. I had no choice but to leave these unanswered.

They prefer to have the 2 photos glued rather than stapled to the form.

I think they only needed 1 photocopy of the important page of the passport (but am not 100% -- may have been 2).

I used my hotel address.

I applied for 180 days multiple entry on the form.

I got there about 08:45 and was out by 11:15. This was on the Monday of a week with 3 public holdays ss may have been unusually busy.

Mobile phones are not allowed inside the building. There is provision to store your phone until you leave.

After queuing on the pavement, we went through security (getting the forms, handing in the mobile) a little before 09:00 and queued outside the building, in the grounds. By 10:00 this was getting sticky.

Once inside the building we queued to have our forms checked (just that the photos were on?) and to have a "token" number qwritten on the form. At this point there's a table with glue, Cocal Cola and Nescafe booths (commercial imperialism!) and a toilet.

Once inside, to the main hall, we waited for our token number to be announced and to appear above one of 3 windows. Numbers were semi-sequenced so best to take a position where you can see all 3 illuminated signs. The main hall was cool (AC?) and had a hot and cold filtered water dispenser.

When your number's up you are "interviewed" and then wait by an adjacent cash window to pay. In my case (UK passport, previous and only visa from HCI London) I paid SLR 4500 including a 270 FAXing fee. It wouldn't do any harm to have the right change.

They gave my passport back with a slip of paper and asked me to come back at 09:00 5 working days later (including the day of submitting the form and the collection day, that is with 3 clear working days between).

If I was doing it again, balancing the total queuing time against the temperature and humidity while queuing, I'd go earlier -- say 08:00.

It may not be necessary to go in person.

Planing to update this after collection visit.

HTH

Cx

zenkris

i was getting my indian visa in kandy in november and instead of a week it took 9 days!

i was told by someone, though, that if you tell them you have to make a flight, they can sometimes do it faster (though definitely not less than 5 working days - a week in reality).

Puck

Well -- some of it was wrong (I mean different from my experience), but not the parts I needed to be wrong!

Here's from this morning's experience ...

It was hot in the sun queuing on the pavement at 08:00. Mad dogs and Englishmen, eh? All the locals had umbrellas or at least a newspaper for shade. From 08:30 they started letting us in off the pavement.

Going through security I handed in the scissors from my backpack along with my mobile phone.

Once in the grounds, a guide spotted people without application forms and directed them to a separate queue.

Once in the building the procedure wasn't to join the queue to have applications checked but to go straight into the main hall and wait for the go to the rightmost window to be opened, around 09:00. Here they took the slip of paper from 5 working days ago and my passport. After checking the paperwork they kept the passport, gave back the slip of paper -- and asked me to come back at 16:30. That's the thing I'd hoped was wrong that wasn't!

According to the nice lady at Indian Airlines office the normal thing to do when coming to Sri Lanka for an India visa is to come with an open return ticket. Then, when you've completed your business with HCI, you book your return on the next available flight. In retrospect I see the sense in that but, naively, I'd thought the HCI process would be predictable enough to book the return when buying the flight. My flight out was around 50% capacity so return availability shouldn't (!) be a problem.

HTH, Cx