Visa Information

Permission to visit a country is given in the form of a visa, and usually visas are a necessary part of your travel overseas. In order to get a visa, your passport must be examined by the officials of the country you are planning on visiting, and a stamp or sticker is placed in your passport specifying the time period that you are allowed to be in that country. If you are visiting several countries, you might need several visas.

To get a visa for China or India, you first need to fill out an application. Here are the download links to Acrobat (.pdf) files that contain either the Chinese Visa Application or the Indian Visa Application.

For both visas, apply to be a tourist (not "in transit" or anything else). That's a single-entry "L" visa for China. On the Indian visa there is a question (#36) asking for the names of people you know in India. For this, fill in the words "David Less Tours." After completion, send the application, along with a bank (not personal) check for the proper amount of money (in U.S. dollars), one or two passport photographs (depending on the country), and your valid passport to the appropriate Indian or Chinese consulate in San Francisco, at the address given below.

Your passport is valuable! Be sure to send your application by some way that it can be tracked, and delivery can be confirmed.

David Less Tours will need a copy of the picture you use on your visa application (so get one extra when getting the photos taken), a photocopy of your passport pages that have your photo and essential information, and a photocopy of your visa when it arrives. This is so that we can facilitate the replacement of your passport and visa, should they be lost, and also to ease passages across borders and interactions with officials.

Consulate General of the P.R.C in San Francisco

1450 Laguna Street San Francisco, CA 94115
Tel: (415) 674-2940 / Fax: (415) 563-4861
www.chinaconsulatesf.org

Consulate General of India

540 Arguello Boulevard San Francisco, CA 94118
Tel: (415) 668-0662 / Fax: (415) 668-9764
www.cgisf.org

The Egyptian Consulate General in San Francisco

276 Mallorca Way San Francisco, CA 94115
Tel: (415) 346-9700 / Fax: (415) 346-9480
www.egy2000.com