Help getting a tourism visa well in advance of travel dates

Question

Hi,

We are South Africans living in South Africa, we plan on traveling to Russia I Need september 2017.

This will be part of a world trip we are doing on 2017. The problem is that we are leaving South Africa in January 2017 and so not plan on returning until after we visit Russia in September 2017.

We have been told it is too far in advance to apply for our tourism visa's, but the problem is we have to be in South Africa to apply.

We are not sure what we should do now, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Peter

Answer 1

Yes, this is a common problem. What you can do is to get the tourist visa support while you're traveling and apply for the visa in the country you are at the moment explaining the situation to them. If that doesn't work, you can always apply for a business visa (which is basically the same thing as the tourist one) and for that kind of visa you can get the invitation not earlier than 45 days before your arrival. Make sure you get a "telex" type of business visa support (invitation) that you need in order to get the visa. In this case it will be sent directly to the consulate, so you won't have to deal with post and you will avoid being rejected by the consulate because you present a copy of the invitation to them.