Russian tourist visa in Kathmandu

[steven]

Please post your embassy reports and questions about the Russian visa in Kathmandu below.

We collect all travel intelligence at the Russian visa page.

See here if you are still in need of a letter of invitation for your Russian visa.

[Morgane]

Hello !
My boyfriend and I got our Russian tourist visa yesterday at Kathmandu embassy ! He is spanish, I am french.
It was very difficult to find an embassy delivering russian tourist visas in Asia (especially for spanish) so here are our advice.
We also got Mongolian visa (sooooo easy) and Chinese visa (easy if you have al the documents) in Kathmandu and told everything on this forum.

The embassy is in Baluwatar, 4km from Thamel. The best to go is to take the brown bus (15rs) in front of the Chinese embassy (super easy to find, it's the only bus passing in this street !). The Russian embassy is reactive by e-mail ([email protected]) so better to contact them before to make sure you can apply for the visa (they don't speak very well english so ask only 1 question/mail ). The website of the russian embassy in Nepal : https://nepal.mid.ru/en/.

We needed :
- a letter of invitation (voucher+confirmation are in the same doc), bought for 9€ each on vouchervisa.com (a B&W printed document is OK)
- an application form to complete online + 1 photo (you have to stick it yourself before, you can do it in a small shop right in front of the consular office)
- photocopy of the passport + photocopy of the 90 days nepalese visa. THIS IS COMPULSORY. If you have 30 days, you can't get the russian tourist visa, even with extension !
- money : 9200rs for regular visa (4 to 20 days officialy, 7 days when we were there) of 18400rs for express visa (same day). BUT they charged us 11500 each for express visa. We don't know why this price : is it because we asked for a 15-days visa ?! We didn't complain haha.
We didn't have plane tickets as we travel by train from Mongolia to Finland : it's not a problem.
We added a confirmation of insurance but it wasn't compulsory.

Getting in the consular office was really a pain in the ass... They have the worst organisation ever ! They open 3x1h each week : Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10h30 to 11h30 (sharp) only.
We went first of Friday 10/05 : closed because of russian public holiday.
We went again on Monday : we couldn't get into the office because there were too many people... We were around 20, and there is only one rude guy for consular service. He spends 7-8min with each people so he can't take more than 7-8 visa application per day ! A policeman showed up with a list to call the people. Once he organised the queue, all the ones asking for express visa (6-7 people) went first. All of that in Nepalese so we couldn't understand anything !! It was a big mess. Finally, we understood that we had to come around 3-4AM tthe night before to put our names on the list...
On Wednesday, we were at the embassy at 3:30AM to give our names to the security man : already 8 names before us !!! The first ones had come at 8PM... So we decided to do the express visa to go first, no matter the cost... At 10AM, we were again at embassy. The policeman directly recognized us We were in position 9-10 out of 29. We told them we wanted to do the express visa.
Then he came again to call everybody and organise the queue. Hopefully, he called us first to go in the office !!! This whole process had been so stressing... We FINALLY managed to get into the consular office, where there is this rude man, and gave the papers. Everything was fine.
We went again the same day at 4PM to get our russian tourist visas

REMEMBER : if you want to ask for a russian tourist visa in Kathmandu, make sure to get a 90 days nepalese tourist visa + go to the embassy at 8PM the night before to put your name on top of the list !