Until very recently, a Pakistan tourist visa was a pain to get. As a US citizen, you needed to apply from your home country (which is a problem as I haven’t lived in the US since 2011) as well as a Letter of Invitation from a travel company or Pakistani citizen. It was expensive, cumbersome and each time I looked into it, I gave up because it simply seemed just too hard.
However, that all changed when Pakistan started offering e-visas. As I was living in Delhi at the time, I thought I would finally have my chance to visit Pakistan. I posted a message on a Delhi expat group on Facebook asking if anyone had any advice or feedback. I was told that India will not renew your work visa if you have been to Pakistan. So I waited, and waited, and waited until I finished my contract in India.
The day that I knew I was leaving India, I happily tried to visit the official government website for visas. It wasn’t accessible from India. Rather than using a VPN, I waited another month until I went to Kenya for Christmas where I planned on applying for my visa while I had access to the website.
So while in Kenya, I tried to access the site. I was finally able to find out the requirements and they didn’t look too bad. You need a hotel booking, and passport copy. No problem.
I started the application process and used my New York address as my permanent address but then was requested to show proof of residence if you were applying from outside of your home country. Worried that a Kenyan IP address would somehow be spotted instead of a US one, I decided to hold off on submitting it.
So I waited a little bit longer until I had a friend in the US who was able to help me out. I provided her with all of the necessary docs and she screen-shared with me while we went through the full application process.
Unfortunately, nothing in life is that easy. Once she clicked submit, I received an automatic email asking for an LOI, bank statement and letter from employer. Since I was finishing up in India, I couldn’t provide an employment letter. I also didn’t want to pay a company to issue me an LOI.
I started searching different forums, including the ever helpful Caravanistan website) on how people were able to get their visas and many people said that they simply explained that LOIs were no longer needed and provided a detailed itinerary of their trip. I did exactly what other people recommended, sent all my info to my friend and she uploaded them from the US.
A few days later, I got an email confirmation saying that the visa had been approved and excitedly booked my train ticket from Delhi to Amritsar. While the process was annoying and convoluted, it certainly wasn’t as painful as I was expecting. When I finally got to cross the border, the guard looked at my Indian work visa for a long time but eventually let me through. I am still not sure if there was any risk of them not letting me through but I was certainly grateful when the immigration procedures were completed on the Pakistani side and I was officially on my way to Lahore!
To read more about my trip, check out my other blog posts. Here and here!
