There are four travel areas where you must rely on experts, rather than “experts”, like me. For travel advisories, visas, vaccinations, and travel medications the authoritative source is not somebody who went to India five years ago. Sharing my experience won’t help you much now (or even then).
Visa conditions and entry requirements change. Even respectable third-party sites such as Lonely Planet or Frommer’s may lack current information and specifics. I can opine on these topics with anecdotes from my experience, however, I am, in no way shape or form, an authoritative source on these areas. Far from it.
The go to, authoritative source for travel advisory, visa, vaccination, and travel medicine information is the U.S. Department of State’s travel resource site: https://www.state.gov/travel/. There’s an international section that lists the travel advisories, visa, and vaccination requirements via a country search: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel.html. This is the best travel summary on India you will find: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/India.html.
The rest of this information is from my personal experience but remember I’m an “expert”, I’m a guy on the internet who did something five years ago that may or may not still be true.
TRAVEL ADVISORIES
You’ll spend hundreds of hours researching a destination, take five minutes and read the U.S. Department of State’s “review.” The travel alerts and advisories may strike a little fear in your travel plans, however, in many cases it’s the government overreacting. If you are surprised to see a U.S. travel advisory in a country you thought was safe, that advisory is likely related to a specific area that you were not planning to visit. It’s good to know this information and hopefully it doesn’t impact your travel plans.
OBTAINING VISAS
If your previous travels have been limited to domestic adventures and/or the international travel never extended beyond Canada, Mexico, Western Europe, and the Caribbean, you may be surprised to learn that as a U.S. citizen certain countries will not allow you to enter without applying for entry in advance. Certain countries will require you to obtain a visa, which is an entry authorization the local government grants, prior to entering. Visas exist for several scenarios including business, spousal, and travel purposes—obviously apply for the latter, when necessary.
Fortunately, as a U.S. citizen your passport grants visa free access to over 115 countries and another 45 countries where the visa may be obtained on arrival or in advance on-line. That leaves over 30 countries where you need to apply and obtain a visa through an embassy before reaching the border. The four major countries, likely to be included in an around the world itinerary, where you need to obtain a visa in advance are China, India, Russia, and Vietnam. (Brazil was previously included and lifted their visa requirement in 2019. Vietnam can’t be that far behind. These types of changes are reasons why you should check the U.S. Department of State as the authoritative source.)
Visas from Russia and India require a travel booking evidence showing your flights in and out of the country, hotel reservations, and in some cases an invitation letter. That means you need to have specific dates of when you will arrive in and depart Russia or India. If you are thinking that you’ll show up in Russia sometime between June and July and you will pinpoint the exact dates while you are in Berlin in May…stop. The Russia visa doesn’t work that way. You need to obtain your Russia visa before you leave the U.S. and you need to arrive in Russia on June 20 and leave on July 10 (or whatever specific dates you select). That’s how it works for the first time you visit India too. You may want to visit these countries earlier in your travels to provide you more freedom on the time and order of future countries.
Russia and India, along with a few others, only allow you to apply for a visa in your country of residence. If you can't prove you live in the country where you are applying (which will be near impossible if you are traveling) you will need to secure these visas prior to leaving the U.S. India grants a ten-year, multiple entry visa, so at least you do not need go through the visa application process for each subsequent visit.
Unlike the Russia and India visas, the China and Vietnam visas may be obtained while traveling—which I highly recommend because it will be quicker and cheaper (the agency and embassy fees are 50-75% cheaper in Asia compared to obtaining the visa in the U.S.). Various Asian capitals have a Chinese embassy where a visa may be obtained. The best option is to arrive in Hong Kong (which has a separate immigration process from the mainland and is visa free) and arrange for a China visa there. It’s a quick turnaround time, typically less than five days. The Vietnam visa may be obtained while traveling through neighboring countries—Laotian and Cambodian hostels can help with the application process. There are many Laotian and Cambodian stores advertising Vietnam visa services. Plan your travel route go through those countries first, before Vietnam.
There are two methods to obtain visas in the U.S. The cheap but difficult route is to apply for a visa directly through a country’s embassy. There may be an embassy in your hometown although locations are somewhat random outside of New York City and Washington, D.C. For example, there’s an Indian embassy in San Francisco, an Italian embassy in Philadelphia, and a Brazilian embassy in Los Angeles.
The more expensive but easier route is to use a third-party agency. I live in Philadelphia and considered heading to New York City or Washington, D.C. to obtain Russia and India visas on my own. I did the math—tolls into New Jersey, pay for parking at the train station, round-trip train tickets, pay for the subway, pay for a meal or two, take a day off work and then double those costs to pick up my passport after the visa has been approved. I would incur costs comparable to what the agency charges with more headaches. If I lived in New York City or Washington, D.C. and had time (and patience) to spare, I’d consider going direct to the embassy.
The visa agency will provide clear application instructions, offer tracking of your passport, but their services could cost at least $200 more than applying yourself. Shop around for agency services particularly if you live in a major city that has multiple agencies available.
I use a company called CIBT Visa (no hyperlinks, no affiliate marketing nonsense). CIBT has forms that list the required documents and visa application instructions. They can turn around a visa request in less than two weeks. As a bonus they will screen your application and flag any potential errors that led to the embassy rejecting past applications. For example, the Russian invitation letter needs the full name per your passport. I had James Hamill (versus James Randolph Hamill) originally and had to obtain a second invitation letter. CIBT caught the discrepancy before sending my application package to the Russian Embassy. Had I applied myself, that would have been an additional round trip to New York City.
After the Big 4, other countries requiring a visa for entry are typically boosting government coffers rather than screening arrivals. These countries need your passport number and $20 to $100 to issue the visa. For information on these visas, non-authoritative sites, like Lonely Planet, Wikitravel, and TripAdvisor, are useful to fill in a few gaps, answer questions, and provide a few tricks, however, it's important to know the country of origin for who's asking and who’s answering the question. Citizens of Canada and the United Kingdom have different entry requirements for certain countries than a U.S. citizen. Tips from these forums can still be useful. For example, the U.S. Department of State provides the official visa information for Myanmar but if you're trying to figure out whether it's better to apply for the visa in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok the answer is in a forum, although usually it’s an incomplete response. Once you know the better option, in this case Kuala Lumpur, don't assume that the embassy’s address, opening times, or any other information listed in the forum is correct—confirm information with the embassy or agency, which hopefully has a webpage, email, or phone number.
In certain cases, the visa may be obtained online, in advance of your arrival, or payment is made in either USD or the local currency, at the point of entry. If you don’t have cash on hand when the visa payment is collected at the point of entry, there’s usually an ATM or currency exchange at the airport prior to reaching immigration. If you are arriving at a smaller, remote airport or less accessed border crossing, there may not be immediate ATM access but someone at immigration and customs will know how to handle your lack of cash situation. At the airport in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, immigration covered my visa expense—I was then escorted to an ATM outside the airport with a security guard who took the cash after I made a withdraw.
OBTAINING A PASSPORT AND SUBSEQUENT UPDATES
I obtained my first passport in 1996 when I was fifteen years old for a trip to Mexico. I recall visiting the Bucks County Courthouse on a weeknight because that was the only place and time when I could apply for a passport. The times have changed. Now a visit to the U.S. Post Office is all that’s required to submit the passport application paperwork or to renew an existing passport. For instructions visit: https://www.usps.com/international/passports.htm
When you begin receiving visas, you’ll notice that beyond the aesthetics of making you passport look like that of a rugged traveler, the visas take up a lot of space, sometimes an entire page. The visas are also valid for a specific time period, say ten years, and then you’ll realize your passport expires in four years, and thus you aren’t maximizing the visa’s cost. Countries also require a passport to be valid for at least six months beyond your arrival date. Address those concerns and order a new passport before leaving the U.S., before you apply for a ten-year, multiple entry visa. When you order the new passport, check the box for additional pages to be added. These actions will limit the impact of potential passport issues.
If you run out of passport pages while traveling, it is relatively easy to add pages on the road, at least in Bangkok, the only place I have added pages. I made an online reservation with the U.S. Embassy for early in the morning. I went to the American citizen entrance. I had my passport pages added within fifteen minutes of arrival.
PASSPORT BACKUP
Create both a digital and hard copy of your passport. The hard copy serves well in an emergency if your passport is stolen and you can’t find a printer. If your passport is stolen, obtaining a new one is relatively straight forward, assuming you are near a U.S. Embassy. Report that your passport was stolen, obtain new passport photos, and then visit the nearest U.S. Embassy.
Even though you may never rent a car while traveling around the world, it’s a good precautionary idea to bring your driver’s license. In a worst-case scenario, it may be your only form of identification.
VACCINATIONS AND TRAVEL MEDICINE
Compared to visas, I’m even less of an expert on vaccinations and travel medicine. In the U.S. travel medicine can be as frustrating an experience as navigating any other parts of our country’s healthcare system. Travel vaccinations are not usually covered by health insurance (although check first) and price shopping can be difficult since many doctor’s offices have no idea what their services cost. Even if you ask the doctor upfront, the bill you receive may be six times higher than the original quote—thanks UCLA Medical. Certain vaccinations require multiple shots, several months apart, so plan ahead.
A yellow fever vaccination in the U.S. costs $100 (except at UCLA Medical where it costs $600). The same shot costs under $25 everywhere else in the world. Thus, your best option for lower costs may be to obtain the vaccinations while you are traveling. If you are heading to Western Europe first before entering a malaria zone, do a little research and obtain your vaccinations in Switzerland or Germany or France…anywhere but the U.S. Just remember, I’m an “expert.”
If you decide you want to obtain the vaccinations in advance of traveling, visit a travel medicine practitioner instead of a general practitioner. The travel medicine physician should have better pricing, is more knowledgeable, and may share other healthcare considerations. They also have more knowledge about the medications you should take beyond the vaccinations, such as whether you need malaria medication and if you should pack bug repellent. After receiving vaccination shots, you will be issued a yellow card that tracks the dates of the vaccinations you received, which may need to be presented at border crossings. The only time I was asked for a vaccination card was crossing the border between Kenya and Tanzania.
Altitude sickness medication is available in Kathmandu and other places where you may be hiking at a high altitude.
SICKNESS WHILE TRAVELING
If you feel sick while traveling or worse, need stitches, don’t hesitate to see a doctor because you think it will break your travel budget. Remember you are not in the U.S. Healthcare costs are reasonable. Doctors around the world are perfectly competent—get the stitches instead of settling for Neosporin and a Band-Aid. Take a similar approach with more serious ailments. I had hernia surgery in the U.S. which costs $23,000 ($20,800 covered by my insurance). My brother had hernia surgery in Singapore and where it costs under $3,000. Same exact surgery. If you need hernia or similar surgery, strongly consider having the surgery performed internationally—even if you lose a month or two of travel funds, it’s still cheaper than when you return to the U.S. You shouldn’t put off basic surgery for what may transpire into a more complicated procedure if left untreated. Again, I’m an “expert.”
If you are traveling for a year, you will miss your six-month dental checkup—get a teeth cleaning in South Korea. It will cost under $50.
I cover travel insurance in the next section. That’s all my “expert” advice on travel advisories, visa, vaccinations, and travel medicine.
The go to, authoritative source for travel advisory, visa, vaccination, and travel medicine information is the U.S. Department of State’s travel resource site: https://www.state.gov/travel/. There’s an international section that lists the travel advisories, visa, and vaccination requirements via a country search: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel.html. This is the best travel summary on India you will find: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/India.html.
The rest of this information is from my personal experience but remember I’m an “expert”, I’m a guy on the internet who did something five years ago that may or may not still be true.
TRAVEL ADVISORIES
You’ll spend hundreds of hours researching a destination, take five minutes and read the U.S. Department of State’s “review.” The travel alerts and advisories may strike a little fear in your travel plans, however, in many cases it’s the government overreacting. If you are surprised to see a U.S. travel advisory in a country you thought was safe, that advisory is likely related to a specific area that you were not planning to visit. It’s good to know this information and hopefully it doesn’t impact your travel plans.
OBTAINING VISAS
If your previous travels have been limited to domestic adventures and/or the international travel never extended beyond Canada, Mexico, Western Europe, and the Caribbean, you may be surprised to learn that as a U.S. citizen certain countries will not allow you to enter without applying for entry in advance. Certain countries will require you to obtain a visa, which is an entry authorization the local government grants, prior to entering. Visas exist for several scenarios including business, spousal, and travel purposes—obviously apply for the latter, when necessary.
Fortunately, as a U.S. citizen your passport grants visa free access to over 115 countries and another 45 countries where the visa may be obtained on arrival or in advance on-line. That leaves over 30 countries where you need to apply and obtain a visa through an embassy before reaching the border. The four major countries, likely to be included in an around the world itinerary, where you need to obtain a visa in advance are China, India, Russia, and Vietnam. (Brazil was previously included and lifted their visa requirement in 2019. Vietnam can’t be that far behind. These types of changes are reasons why you should check the U.S. Department of State as the authoritative source.)
Visas from Russia and India require a travel booking evidence showing your flights in and out of the country, hotel reservations, and in some cases an invitation letter. That means you need to have specific dates of when you will arrive in and depart Russia or India. If you are thinking that you’ll show up in Russia sometime between June and July and you will pinpoint the exact dates while you are in Berlin in May…stop. The Russia visa doesn’t work that way. You need to obtain your Russia visa before you leave the U.S. and you need to arrive in Russia on June 20 and leave on July 10 (or whatever specific dates you select). That’s how it works for the first time you visit India too. You may want to visit these countries earlier in your travels to provide you more freedom on the time and order of future countries.
Russia and India, along with a few others, only allow you to apply for a visa in your country of residence. If you can't prove you live in the country where you are applying (which will be near impossible if you are traveling) you will need to secure these visas prior to leaving the U.S. India grants a ten-year, multiple entry visa, so at least you do not need go through the visa application process for each subsequent visit.
Unlike the Russia and India visas, the China and Vietnam visas may be obtained while traveling—which I highly recommend because it will be quicker and cheaper (the agency and embassy fees are 50-75% cheaper in Asia compared to obtaining the visa in the U.S.). Various Asian capitals have a Chinese embassy where a visa may be obtained. The best option is to arrive in Hong Kong (which has a separate immigration process from the mainland and is visa free) and arrange for a China visa there. It’s a quick turnaround time, typically less than five days. The Vietnam visa may be obtained while traveling through neighboring countries—Laotian and Cambodian hostels can help with the application process. There are many Laotian and Cambodian stores advertising Vietnam visa services. Plan your travel route go through those countries first, before Vietnam.
There are two methods to obtain visas in the U.S. The cheap but difficult route is to apply for a visa directly through a country’s embassy. There may be an embassy in your hometown although locations are somewhat random outside of New York City and Washington, D.C. For example, there’s an Indian embassy in San Francisco, an Italian embassy in Philadelphia, and a Brazilian embassy in Los Angeles.
The more expensive but easier route is to use a third-party agency. I live in Philadelphia and considered heading to New York City or Washington, D.C. to obtain Russia and India visas on my own. I did the math—tolls into New Jersey, pay for parking at the train station, round-trip train tickets, pay for the subway, pay for a meal or two, take a day off work and then double those costs to pick up my passport after the visa has been approved. I would incur costs comparable to what the agency charges with more headaches. If I lived in New York City or Washington, D.C. and had time (and patience) to spare, I’d consider going direct to the embassy.
The visa agency will provide clear application instructions, offer tracking of your passport, but their services could cost at least $200 more than applying yourself. Shop around for agency services particularly if you live in a major city that has multiple agencies available.
I use a company called CIBT Visa (no hyperlinks, no affiliate marketing nonsense). CIBT has forms that list the required documents and visa application instructions. They can turn around a visa request in less than two weeks. As a bonus they will screen your application and flag any potential errors that led to the embassy rejecting past applications. For example, the Russian invitation letter needs the full name per your passport. I had James Hamill (versus James Randolph Hamill) originally and had to obtain a second invitation letter. CIBT caught the discrepancy before sending my application package to the Russian Embassy. Had I applied myself, that would have been an additional round trip to New York City.
After the Big 4, other countries requiring a visa for entry are typically boosting government coffers rather than screening arrivals. These countries need your passport number and $20 to $100 to issue the visa. For information on these visas, non-authoritative sites, like Lonely Planet, Wikitravel, and TripAdvisor, are useful to fill in a few gaps, answer questions, and provide a few tricks, however, it's important to know the country of origin for who's asking and who’s answering the question. Citizens of Canada and the United Kingdom have different entry requirements for certain countries than a U.S. citizen. Tips from these forums can still be useful. For example, the U.S. Department of State provides the official visa information for Myanmar but if you're trying to figure out whether it's better to apply for the visa in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok the answer is in a forum, although usually it’s an incomplete response. Once you know the better option, in this case Kuala Lumpur, don't assume that the embassy’s address, opening times, or any other information listed in the forum is correct—confirm information with the embassy or agency, which hopefully has a webpage, email, or phone number.
In certain cases, the visa may be obtained online, in advance of your arrival, or payment is made in either USD or the local currency, at the point of entry. If you don’t have cash on hand when the visa payment is collected at the point of entry, there’s usually an ATM or currency exchange at the airport prior to reaching immigration. If you are arriving at a smaller, remote airport or less accessed border crossing, there may not be immediate ATM access but someone at immigration and customs will know how to handle your lack of cash situation. At the airport in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, immigration covered my visa expense—I was then escorted to an ATM outside the airport with a security guard who took the cash after I made a withdraw.
OBTAINING A PASSPORT AND SUBSEQUENT UPDATES
I obtained my first passport in 1996 when I was fifteen years old for a trip to Mexico. I recall visiting the Bucks County Courthouse on a weeknight because that was the only place and time when I could apply for a passport. The times have changed. Now a visit to the U.S. Post Office is all that’s required to submit the passport application paperwork or to renew an existing passport. For instructions visit: https://www.usps.com/international/passports.htm
When you begin receiving visas, you’ll notice that beyond the aesthetics of making you passport look like that of a rugged traveler, the visas take up a lot of space, sometimes an entire page. The visas are also valid for a specific time period, say ten years, and then you’ll realize your passport expires in four years, and thus you aren’t maximizing the visa’s cost. Countries also require a passport to be valid for at least six months beyond your arrival date. Address those concerns and order a new passport before leaving the U.S., before you apply for a ten-year, multiple entry visa. When you order the new passport, check the box for additional pages to be added. These actions will limit the impact of potential passport issues.
If you run out of passport pages while traveling, it is relatively easy to add pages on the road, at least in Bangkok, the only place I have added pages. I made an online reservation with the U.S. Embassy for early in the morning. I went to the American citizen entrance. I had my passport pages added within fifteen minutes of arrival.
PASSPORT BACKUP
Create both a digital and hard copy of your passport. The hard copy serves well in an emergency if your passport is stolen and you can’t find a printer. If your passport is stolen, obtaining a new one is relatively straight forward, assuming you are near a U.S. Embassy. Report that your passport was stolen, obtain new passport photos, and then visit the nearest U.S. Embassy.
Even though you may never rent a car while traveling around the world, it’s a good precautionary idea to bring your driver’s license. In a worst-case scenario, it may be your only form of identification.
VACCINATIONS AND TRAVEL MEDICINE
Compared to visas, I’m even less of an expert on vaccinations and travel medicine. In the U.S. travel medicine can be as frustrating an experience as navigating any other parts of our country’s healthcare system. Travel vaccinations are not usually covered by health insurance (although check first) and price shopping can be difficult since many doctor’s offices have no idea what their services cost. Even if you ask the doctor upfront, the bill you receive may be six times higher than the original quote—thanks UCLA Medical. Certain vaccinations require multiple shots, several months apart, so plan ahead.
A yellow fever vaccination in the U.S. costs $100 (except at UCLA Medical where it costs $600). The same shot costs under $25 everywhere else in the world. Thus, your best option for lower costs may be to obtain the vaccinations while you are traveling. If you are heading to Western Europe first before entering a malaria zone, do a little research and obtain your vaccinations in Switzerland or Germany or France…anywhere but the U.S. Just remember, I’m an “expert.”
If you decide you want to obtain the vaccinations in advance of traveling, visit a travel medicine practitioner instead of a general practitioner. The travel medicine physician should have better pricing, is more knowledgeable, and may share other healthcare considerations. They also have more knowledge about the medications you should take beyond the vaccinations, such as whether you need malaria medication and if you should pack bug repellent. After receiving vaccination shots, you will be issued a yellow card that tracks the dates of the vaccinations you received, which may need to be presented at border crossings. The only time I was asked for a vaccination card was crossing the border between Kenya and Tanzania.
Altitude sickness medication is available in Kathmandu and other places where you may be hiking at a high altitude.
SICKNESS WHILE TRAVELING
If you feel sick while traveling or worse, need stitches, don’t hesitate to see a doctor because you think it will break your travel budget. Remember you are not in the U.S. Healthcare costs are reasonable. Doctors around the world are perfectly competent—get the stitches instead of settling for Neosporin and a Band-Aid. Take a similar approach with more serious ailments. I had hernia surgery in the U.S. which costs $23,000 ($20,800 covered by my insurance). My brother had hernia surgery in Singapore and where it costs under $3,000. Same exact surgery. If you need hernia or similar surgery, strongly consider having the surgery performed internationally—even if you lose a month or two of travel funds, it’s still cheaper than when you return to the U.S. You shouldn’t put off basic surgery for what may transpire into a more complicated procedure if left untreated. Again, I’m an “expert.”
If you are traveling for a year, you will miss your six-month dental checkup—get a teeth cleaning in South Korea. It will cost under $50.
I cover travel insurance in the next section. That’s all my “expert” advice on travel advisories, visa, vaccinations, and travel medicine.