I guess I never shared with you all that Russia has been taken out of my route.
Getting a Russian Visa has proven to be more difficult than a Chinese Visa – and quite frankly, it just means I’ll be spending more time in China and Mongolia.
First, you have to receive an “invite” from a registered Russian travel company/group. Okay, so if you google this you find places that do it between $100-$300 USD. My difficulty…I don’t know my exact date of arrival to the border so I wanted a 3 month Visa which made the price go up. It’s not like China where you have 3 months after your date of arrival – you have that time span when you applied and that’s that.
I just could imagine myself settling for a 1 month and not making it, or being too early or some awful minor catastrophe. So, okay, I’ll apply for a 3 month Visa. I try this fellow in Texas: www.direct-passports.com and it was the most awful Customer Service I have ever experienced. Rude and snarky and obviously could not read my email completely through before being a complete dick. Hey Tony Abrilian, now you are on the internet as being an awful business person.
I go to another agency, they obviously know the ropes a lot better than the previous fellow. The problem is that I can only be issued the invite a couple of weeks before my entrance into Russia. That is impossible as I’ll be riding around China on a bike and have no guarantee of a Russian Consulate on my route.
Strike it from the route. Shucks. What a pain and as an fyi, it costs close to $500 total for a 3 month Russian Visa. Bummer. I can spend that money in a better way, say 6 months worth of food on the road.