top of page

Visa Application - India

After just finishing my first ever tourist Visa application for travel to India, I decided it would be best to make this my most recent post. It was a very time consuming process (4 Hours) One that should not have taken so long, and after reading multiple comments via other platforms where travellers had the same frustrations, I had finally managed to successfully submit mine!


Firstly there are companies out there that monopolise on the fact that the application process is hard work. These companies are happy to fill out the Visa application process for you (for a small fee of course) with prices ranging between $150 to $300. Extortionate. The visa itself has increased in price in recent years, coming in at $100.


Firstly I would suggest using google chrome or Mozilla Firefox to fill in your application. For whatever reason the site does not work particularly well with Safari, it does indeed state this on the website itself. In order to get to the site for my Visa application I went via the Gov.uk website, where it gave advice on Indian Travel Advice - Entry requirements.


The gov website then took me to the High Commission website which gave me a link to purchase my Visa.


The website can also be found here:


*Clicking on e-visa in the left corner will then take you to this page in order to start your application


Most of the fields required for the e-visa application are pretty straight forward, my main issues came when I was filling out the 3rd page, adding in my parental details and references. Your personal reference will be your next of kin details (unless travelling together)


For an Indian reference, add the:

Name: The hotel you will be staying at Address: The first line has a maximum number of characters, so keep it short (Number or Resort name and Street)

e.g. 1 no. Kaziranga National Park Golaghat, Assam, Bokākhāt, 785609, India Contact Number: I found it hard to find contact details for most of the hotels in the area, mine came through on our Booking.com receipt.


The most confusing part of my e-visa tourist application was the fact that this page kept crashing and for the life of me I could not figure out why?! I had seen countless Trip Advisor forums with people asking the same questions and came across a helpful answer on one of Lonely planet's forums. Firstly let me just say; as you make your way through the application, I would continuously hit "Save and Exit" a few times to assure you don't have to painstakingly re enter all of your information (as I did).


On this page you will also find a box that enables you to enter all of your previously visited countries over the last 10 years. This is the reason my application crashed several times! Enter your previous destinations with nothing but a space in between. Do not use commas, do not press enter for a new line. I repeat use only a space bar!


e.g. Costa Rica Sri Lanka Morocco....


Once I had entered my information as above, for the first time, the site did not crash and I was able to move on to the next page! SUCCESS!!

When it comes to uploading your passport style photos:

Dimensions: 350 x 350 Pixels Minimum Size: 1MB Maximum

For this part, I just used my DSLR camera to take a quick snap and then saved it as a JPG image with a really low quality. I used photoshop for this and saved the quality as Low (Around 3). The size was roughly 955KB. Here's an example of the mug shot that I used for my application.



You will also need to Scan a copy of your open passport and upload this as a PDF File.

Luckily I had no issues with the payment process using PayPal. Unfortunately this isn't the case for everyone as many people have no issues with the application up until this point. When paying for your e-visa ensure you wait at least 2 hour after your initial try before attempting again, as it can take this amount of time for it to be received. If you do have to try again, be aware that after 3 failed payment attempts the Visa will be blocked and you will have to start the entire process from scratch, so TAKE YOUR TIME!

I hope this can help some of you with your Indian e-Visa applications! Let me know if you have any other helpful hints and tips and fingers crossed you can do it in under 4 hours...

24 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page