You need a passport
with a minimum of six months validity to enter Bhutan and its neighboring
countries. You should ensure that your passport has lots of empty pages for
stamps, especially if you are traveling via India or Nepal.
Keep your passport safe. No country other than India has the facility for
issuing a replacement passport in Bhutan. If you lose your passport, you
must travel ‘stateless’ to another country to get it replaced. You should
carry some additional form of identification and a photocopy of your
passport to help in the event of such a disaster.
Most countries issue visas from their embassies abroad and stamp it in your
passport, but not Bhutan. Visas are issued only when you arrive in the
country, either at Paro airport or (if entering by road) at Phuentsholing.
You must apply in advance through a tour operator and receive approval
before you travel to Bhutan.
All visas are approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Thimpu. All
applications for tourist visas must be initialized by a Bhutanese tour
operator. The operator submits the visa application to Department of Tourism
in Thimpu. It, in turn, checks that you have completely paid for the trip
and then issues an approval letter to the tour operator. With this approval
in hand, the tour operator then makes a final application to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, which takes up to a week to process the visa.
When the visa clearance is issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it
sends a visa confirmation number to the tour operator and to Druk Air. Druk
Air will not issue your tickets to Paro until it receives this confirmation
number and then rechecks the visa information when you check in for the
flight.
The actual visa endorsement is stamped in your passport when you arrive at
one of the two ports of entry for tourists. When the visa is issued, you
need to pay US$20 and present a passport photo with your passport number
written on the back. You will then receive a visa for the exact period you
have arranged to be in Bhutan. If some unusual event requires that you
obtain a visa extension, your tour operator will arrange it.
It’s an amazingly efficient system considering all the time, distance and
various levels of bureaucracy involved. When you arrive in Bhutan, the visa
officer will invariably be able to produce your approval form from the file
and the visa will be issued on the sport. It’s helpful, however, to have the
reference number or even a faxed copy of the visa authority available to aid
the immigration officials and Druk Air to find your information quickly.
You need a passport
with a minimum of six months validity to enter Bhutan and its neighboring
countries. You should ensure that your passport has lots of empty pages for
stamps, especially if you are traveling via India or Nepal.
All visas are approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Thimpu. All
applications for tourist visas must be initialized by a Bhutanese tour
operator. The operator submits the visa application to Department of Tourism
in Thimpu. It, in turn, checks that you have completely paid for the trip
and then issues an approval letter to the tour operator. With this approval
in hand, the tour operator then makes a final application to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, which takes up to a week to process the visa.