Visa
The biggest requirement for any international traveler (especially from India) is getting visas in time. Its a huge ask with truck loads of documents and time requirement. The time was extra for us as we were crossing more than 15 countries and it involved lot of logistics.
The requirement of visa has to commence with final destination country, in our case United Kingdom. UK visa is one of the most efficient process I encountered. It's been outsourced to VFS and is an online process. Though the time required for clearance is one of the maximum due to numbers involved. The documents required range from identity to status to business to your exact wealth identification. Interview is compulsory and appointment has to be taken online. After form submission everyone has to go through bio metric and then wait. In my case I got the visa in 10 working days but overall our group got delayed due to rejection of one visa due to poor planning by these guys. It took nearly a month for getting their visa through.
The requirements for getting visas kept us amazed throughout. Every country had bucketful of requirements while our friends having European or US passports need barely move their fingers and visas are granted. Getting UK visa also has it's advantages of not requiring bio metric in any of the other nations on our route. I took assistance of internet and went to each country embassy site for collating our document requirements.
Getting Schengen visa was again a challenge. I went to their counter before submitting to ask the requirement and called our guys from Baroda for submission. On the day of submission they was discussion among the counter people to identify where is Vadodra (official name of Baroda). On my offering them help by informing that it's in Gujrat, we were amazed when the next question was where is Gujrat. This to from Indians and not from guys from far of countries. I had to take their geography class and also gave them a lecture of 'Be Indian and Know India'. All of them would have known counties of USA or UK but no Gujrat. I was afraid to name few places of NE and embarrass myself. My visa was accepted but these guys had to move to Mumbai office for applying. Actually the whole issue was because these guys wanted every thing done by me. It was now troublesome for them to process their documents themselves. Anyway, Schengen saved our pain as it reduces need for number of visas and is a boon for travelers.
Again one of these guys got Schengen visa with reduced dates due to their not handling documents carefully and they were forced to re-apply for correct duration thus involving time penalty. By this time I was jittery and decided to postponed my trip by two weeks. Where earlier I had planned to kick off on 2nd June, I decided to start my journey on 16th June. I informed my decision to these guys and sure enough they followed suit and also requested me to change their flight tickets also.
After UK and Schengen visas in my passport, I confidently marched on for Ukraine visa and got the biggest surprise. Ukraine had stopped giving tourism visa to Indian males without their family in retaliation to India stopping visa for unaccompanied Ukraine females. Probably the logic that if you don't want them here you will not be allowed opportunity in their state. But what about guys not wanting it here or there......
This was major setback and forced me to decide on different route to enter Europe. Besides Ukraine I had options of Georgia - very bad roads, Belarus - visa issues again, Latvia or Scandinavia.
I homed on to Scandinavia and changed my visa requirements accordingly. As all Scandinavian countries are covered in Schengen visa, it saved lot of time. These two guys decided to stick along and changed their route also.
Getting visas for Central Asian Countries including Russia requires a 'Letter of Invitation' and voluminous forms in Russian. These letters of invitation are issued by authorised travel agents for tourists and are time consuming and costly. Meanwhile I got a life saver of a guy (Travel Agent in Delhi) who for a price offered us visas for all the Stans and Russia. To ensure timely visas I decided to pay extra thus increasing the already rocketing budget and gave him a go ahead. Finally, based on verbal request, I ended up paying for visa and processing fee for these two guys also. A decision which I would later regret, as they say, hindsight is always six by six. Though this travel agent proved true to his words and got me visas as promised within three weeks. His details are 'Shalimar Travels', (Sambhav - +91-9810372981) (shalitravel@yahoo.com)
Finally on 10 June we had following visas with us - Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Schengen and UK. With my earlier travel there is option for only three more blank pages before I need to apply for fresh passport.
Kazhak Visa looks something like this......
Visas in hand - Journey planned - HERE I START.........oops wait on man....what about permission for your machine....
Carnet
Well not yet....there is requirement for permission for the bike, this is called 'Carnet'. It's something akin to visa for your vehicle. Also known as 'Carnet De Passages En Douane', its an understanding between partner countries of allowing personal vehicles holding this document within their country without taxes. It entails depositing of collateral amounting to thrice the cost of your vehicle. This collateral is returned once you return back with your vehicle. This ensures that you do not sell your vehicle outside India/ parent country without paying taxes. In India it is issued by Automobile Associations depending on your home town. They charged me ten thousand rupees. Carnet looks like this......
One needs to have passport, visas and be a member of any of the automobile association. I got it from WIAA (Western Indian Automobile Association) based in Mumbai. Carnet booklet has many pages, each with three perforated portions having details of your vehicle. You need to get it stamped at every country exit and entry as proof . One portion is taken by customs at entry point, one portion by customs at exit point and one portion remains as your proof.
While exiting India, first page is filled and stamped and one portion torn off. Now the second portion of this page would be required only on return. Its essential to get this stamped at every country to ensure that subsequent countries allow your vehicle. Its like a proof of your journey.
Visa in passports, Carnet in bag......Here I Come.....
