The Small Issue of Visas
When coming in from Nepal into Tibet, you need to travel on a group visa. That is it to say, you don't have an individual visa in your passport, all there is is that the group leader has a permit with your (and everyone else's) name on it. The problem with this is that you have to enter and leave the country as a group. The country, in this case, is of course Tibet/China (the same thing if you hadn't realised...) This means everyone on this trip has to leave China at the same time, if we are using the group visa. This trip ends in Xi'AN in the middle of China, which means that people are definitely not leaving China at the same time. One person is flying out to Vancouver the day the trip ends, some people are dossing around China for ages. Me, I was intending to stay in Beijing for a while and then take the train to Mongolia (although my appetite for Yaks has been thoroughly sated at this time).
This means they have to convert the group permit to individual visas to enable us to leave separately. The second half of this trip has been overtaken by visits to one permit office in one city after another to find an office whicih will allow us to do this. So far repeatedly no joy. No no no. The rival tour company seems to be able to do this, but we've not. We even have an agent with a father high up in the military currently trying to pull his weight to allow us to change our visas.
So this leaves us in this position.
1. We don't change the visas, possibily have 2000USD fine and detention on trying to leave China without visa.
2. All have to fly to Hong Kong/Mongolia or something together and then come back in again.
I am currently having lots of enquiries about suing the tour company for lost flights etc....
Chuckle chuckle chuckle. All good fun. I've got no onward travel booked yet, so no real problems for me, but the whole trip is getting a bit stressed.
Oh yes, and I spent the afternoon drinking beer at the banks of the Yellow river in Lanzhou (big city, don't know where). So things arent all bad!!!
Hugs
P
This means they have to convert the group permit to individual visas to enable us to leave separately. The second half of this trip has been overtaken by visits to one permit office in one city after another to find an office whicih will allow us to do this. So far repeatedly no joy. No no no. The rival tour company seems to be able to do this, but we've not. We even have an agent with a father high up in the military currently trying to pull his weight to allow us to change our visas.
So this leaves us in this position.
1. We don't change the visas, possibily have 2000USD fine and detention on trying to leave China without visa.
2. All have to fly to Hong Kong/Mongolia or something together and then come back in again.
I am currently having lots of enquiries about suing the tour company for lost flights etc....
Chuckle chuckle chuckle. All good fun. I've got no onward travel booked yet, so no real problems for me, but the whole trip is getting a bit stressed.
Oh yes, and I spent the afternoon drinking beer at the banks of the Yellow river in Lanzhou (big city, don't know where). So things arent all bad!!!
Hugs
P
posted by Unknown at 4:46 AM
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