Obtaining a Pakistani Visa in Central Asia
 

Has anyone had any experience lately getting a Pakistani visa in any of the Central Asian countries?

I am a bit nervous about this visa as we tried to get one in Ankara but they said we needed a letter of introduction from our embassy. The American Embassy in Ankara does not issue this letter of introduction so it sounded like a Catch-22 to me. Also they would only issue a visa for a 3 month entry period, which was too early for us.

Would it help to get a letter of invitation in advance from a tourist agency in Pakistan and does anyone have a recommendation on this? If an LOI can guarantee a visa (well, as much as possible) I will gladly spend the money.

From my experience getting visas so far, its pretty much impossible to know what each embassy requires until you get there in person. Calling in advance has been unsuccessful for us in almost every case. I am trying to be prepared as best as we can and the Pakistani visa procedures seem to vary at random.

Any advice on getting the Pakistani visa in Central Asia would be much appreciated. We will make our first attempt in Tashkent.

BTW, obtaining the other Central Asian visas has been much easier than expected and most of the Central Asian embassy officals in Turkey were friendly and helpful.

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Dave
www.mototrekker.com

[This message has been edited by davidmc (edited 31 July 2005).]

well, as usual, it depends on your nationality, which is ? try to get some support from your embassy : letter of introduction to the pak embassy, etc ...
see other recent "same" threads, about getting visas in iran, pakistan, central asia ...
don t hesitate telling us how you got the other visas in central asia, it may helps others.
thanx, good luck


[This message has been edited by vincent danna (edited 03 August 2005).]

hi
do not try to get youyr visa in iran.

cheers nobby

Thanks Vincent, we are Americans and now in Baku they have told us that they only deal with citizens of the particular country where the embassy is located. They said we should have gotten the visa before we left.

I told them that we couldn't have gotten our visa prior to departure as it would have expired before we got into Pakistan. They were sympathetic, but said there was nothing they could do. They mentioned something about a "new policy" which was sent out to all the embassies.

We will be calling the Pakistan embassy in the USA to see if there is anything they can do.

I will let you know what we find out.

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Dave
www.mototrekker.com

thanx for this info.
i ve heard about this new apparently official policy.
hochififi (french passport) had this problem with pak embassy in iran in late 2004 (like others). i ve tried to help him in france, in vain. after many attenpts and waiting, he finally got the pak visa at the pak embassy in iran (the french embassy didn t want to make him a letter of introduction).
pakistan may have tightened their rules with visas for europe or/and america citizens, as europe (schengen) and/or america may have tightened their rules with visas for pakistan citizens (you know the political situation) : the visa relation is a bilateral matter between 2 countries : the countries "reply" to each other : if one country gets easier/smoother, the other gets easier/smoother; if one country gets harder/tougher, the other gets harder/tougher (diplomcy, politics).

good luck anyways

nb : i ve never heard in pakistan of a kind of letter of invitation (LOI) by a local tourist agency to make the visa process easier smoother.

check also other posts about getting visas for iran pakistan in central asia, for example.

Well, good news, we got the Pakistani visa last week here in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. We made contact with a travel agency in Islamabad and they made a few calls to the Pakistani embassy in Tashkent and the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad on our behalf and explained our situation. Don't know if their intervention helped or not, but at least we got the visa.

The folks at the embassy were quite friendly, but they did say that we should have gotten the visa prior to leaving home and that we could have gotten a visa valid for longer than 6 months.

Moral of the story, get your Pakistan visa before you leave home...

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Dave
www.mototrekker.com