When I asked my friend Stacy, whose own Mongol Rally ended a bit ingloriously in a ditch beside a Kazakh highway, to give me advice about the rally, he said wisely, "Start early." Good advice. For me, who has been thinking about doing this rally since Stacy first told me about it three years ago, the excitement and romanticism and lust for adventure that the rally first evoked have all subsided into stress, anxiety, to do lists and a lot of international phone calls. Yes, the rally is an insane departure from the everyday, a hilarious adventure which Francisca and I will hopefully remember for the rest of our lives. But right now? It is a logistical nightmare.
First off - the visas. Fortunately for us as US citizens, of the twenty countries that we'll traverse, only five need visas: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. Turkey's is an easy online affair.
The rest? Take Russia, for example. The requirements are: hotel reservations for your entire stay, letter of purpose of visit, proposed itinerary, two passport photos, a bank statement, proof of medical insurance, and, if asked, a statement of family makeup and background. Once you've gathered all that, you must request a Letter of Invitation from a licensed tourism operator. That letter gives you access to the application for the visa, which is the next step. Once that six page document is completed, you can submit it to the Russian consulate. However, because the Russian representation in the U.S. only accepts hand-delivered visa applications in specific locations around the U.S., I had to contract a third-party visa company to take it to New York, wait three hours and make sure all the documents were correct, then mail the visas back to the Boston office, where we could finally pick them up. All in all? Twenty days, $350 per visa. Ouch.
Thanks to Stacy's advice, I started the visa process four months back and now we are only waiting on approval from Turkmenistan (fingers crossed!). But the rest of the preparation is not all that easy. Next post I'll talk about our stallion of the desert, the Fiat Panda which will hopefully carry us to Mongolia, and the walkabout we used to get it.
First off - the visas. Fortunately for us as US citizens, of the twenty countries that we'll traverse, only five need visas: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. Turkey's is an easy online affair.
The rest? Take Russia, for example. The requirements are: hotel reservations for your entire stay, letter of purpose of visit, proposed itinerary, two passport photos, a bank statement, proof of medical insurance, and, if asked, a statement of family makeup and background. Once you've gathered all that, you must request a Letter of Invitation from a licensed tourism operator. That letter gives you access to the application for the visa, which is the next step. Once that six page document is completed, you can submit it to the Russian consulate. However, because the Russian representation in the U.S. only accepts hand-delivered visa applications in specific locations around the U.S., I had to contract a third-party visa company to take it to New York, wait three hours and make sure all the documents were correct, then mail the visas back to the Boston office, where we could finally pick them up. All in all? Twenty days, $350 per visa. Ouch.
Thanks to Stacy's advice, I started the visa process four months back and now we are only waiting on approval from Turkmenistan (fingers crossed!). But the rest of the preparation is not all that easy. Next post I'll talk about our stallion of the desert, the Fiat Panda which will hopefully carry us to Mongolia, and the walkabout we used to get it.