When I started writing Caravanistan in 2011, I spent the first 3 months writing about visas. It was so complicated, so obscure, so anti-tourist.
These days, visas are no longer the big issue they once were. However, there is still fear and paranoia. Governments in the region fear Islamic terrorism (Middle East, Pakistan), a hostile takeover (China, India) and poverty (Africa). If you are from one of these places, applying for visas can still be time-consuming, frustrating, confusing and sometimes downright scary. We know, we’ve been there.
And even the best passports still have to deal with some surprise reversals and kafkaesque bureaucracy, if they want to visit everything.
So, to help you on your way, we have compiled this guide to Silk Road visas. We spend a lot of time writing and updating this guide, and we like to think it’s the definitive resource on visas in this part of the world.
Getting visa support
Over the years, invitation letters have been scrapped, or simply impossible to come by. For now, we only offer LOIs for Pakistan, if you need one.
For the Turkmen letter of invitation, you need to book a tour, or get a transit visa.
Can I trust this information?
We keep this guide as up to date as possible. Besides traveling in the region and having a lot of direct experience with bureaucracy in these countries, we also get a lot of information from other travelers. There are no longer sources referred to in the articles outside of the forum because of link rot, word of mouth and e-mail sources, but all the basic stuff is cross-checked with the international Timatic website airlines use.
So we do everything we can to keep the information on this pages correct. But please remember that you are coming to a place where rules change as quickly as the mood of those who make them, and nothing is 100% certain.
General notes
- Give away information on a need-to-know basis. Generally speaking, nobody needs or cares to know you are cycling, going to go to some far-off corner of Xinjiang, or are a journalist with a multimedia-project for an NGO. But once they know, they have to follow the rules. So in this case, it’s best to be as ordinary as possible. An office worker, only interested in the most touristy sights, sleeping in hotels and using public transport.
- Across the Silk Road, it is ok to switch passports at border crossings if you are a dual citizen of 2 countries.
- You do not need return flights for any visas or visa-free regimes across the Silk Road. Only for transit visas do you need to prove onward transport.