THE HARDEST VISAS TO GET - after getting them all

hi I'm Sal Ivalo and I've been to every country in the world today we're gonna talk about the hardest visas for me to get even though I travel with an American passport which is one of the strongest ones we get visa free arrival to the majority of countries I still know my fair share of days spent applying for visas at embassies filling out paperwork and trying to convince Consul generals and begging with them to please stamp my passport so now I'm gonna share the hardest stories of getting visas the first story I'll share is of a place that now you can just apply online as an American but when I was looking to go it was complicated in a lot of ways and that is India I went for an internship in 2012 when I was 21 years old and I wanted to get paid for the internship and it but it wasn't through my school so the embassy didn't know if they should give me a work visa or an education visa neither of those work because for education you have to go through a school for work you need to be paid a certain amount and be sponsored so they ended up giving me what's called an X visa which basically just means here's the visa it's not for any specific reason you can open a bank account but that's it they told me the embassy Nabu Dhabi had only ever given two of those out before I was number three next door to India is Pakistan which is another V so that was hard for me to get I went for work so theoretically it should been kind of easy but as an American there's a little bit of complications between the two countries and getting a visa so I went to them to see with a like an invitation letter from the person I was working with and the man looked at my like application and saw that I was a young American guy and said okay come back in three weeks but the business needed me to come a little bit sooner than that so there's a few calls that were sent and I ended up being told I could go back the next day because some strings were pulled when I got there the next day I say hi like I'm looking for my visa and the man says didn't I tell you to come back next month and I said well I think that this person called for me and he looked at me shocked and said you're the one that they called for and I was like yeah like can you this is like fine so he starts filling out a visa and needed a six-month multiple entry visa cuz I was gonna be going in and out for a long time and he hands me a five-day single entry visa and I look at him I like but this isn't what I applied for it this isn't what I need and he says tell your friend that South Sudan was a really interesting example it's has a conflict right now and so there's not many tourists who want to go there are a lot of journalists who want to go but they don't necessarily want journalists to go the government kind of infamously announced a couple years ago that they were gonna start charging people like ten thousand dollars to get a visa because they knew that like the UN whu-oh we're gonna send people anyway so they could pay whatever they wanted they ended up changing that that rule so I was in Nairobi I went to the embassy I gave all of my forms they say okay come back in 48 hours I come back in the second I walk in the door the one picks up the phone when I get to the to the window she says I hate you you need to talk to the Consul General so I go in the back they like lead me into his big office and he has my passport and he's just like flipping through it and he said why do you want to go visit South Sudan and I said oh I'm trying to go to every country in Africa and I have these friends that I want to meet and he starts shaking his head he's like I'm sorry you need a good reason and he shuts the passport and he like puts it down and I this is you know one of my last 10 countries to go to I see the whole trip like flashing before my eyes and I look at him and I'm like okay I need to convince this man to let me go so I'm like sir I know that like it's a complicated time but I would really love to go and I would really love any advice you could get me on like how to stay safe and have a good time in South Sudan and of course you know you know that works really well I think would you like smile and like you ask people for help and you like tell them that they're smart and able to assist you and she picks up the passport again he starts like looking through it he's like you know some journalists go and they pretend that they're tourists and I was like oh no like I'm you know because I'm not I'm not a journalist I'm not lying like I just wanted to see my friends you know and he he's like you know some people they want to go to the rebels and like talk to them and like oh my god like I would never want to do that I really just want to see Juba like tell me what would be good to see I convinced him that I want to go just for tourism which is true that's all I wanted to do and that is all I did so he gives me the visa I go and I have a few days in Juba with my friends is a really fun time Eritrea is a country in the Horn of Africa and it has one of the more strict like entry requirements for visitors it's one of the least visited countries in the world but it's really fascinating it's a beautiful place so I really wanted to go it was in incredible process to get the visa they ended up sending it to the Abu Dhabi embassy not the Dubai consulate and so everybody was confused because they thought it was sent I thought it was received the consulate didn't have it it was just enormous like conundrum of people like everyone thinking they had done what they had to do but nothing actually working I got really close to the Consul General because I was going to the consulate every day and saying hey is it ready yet is it ready yet and asking him about the country it was just a really long long process but totally worth it I ended up having a great time in Eritrea now rue was another place the visa was a little bit complicated technically it looks somewhat easy you just have to send an email to the immigration office and they'll get back to you and send in specific forms but ends up being a little bit more complicated now we're only has 10,000 people there's one guy in the visa office if he's on vacation you don't get a response if he forgets your email you don't get a response you have to constantly follow up some of the forms that they asked for completely strange it's the only country in the South Pacific that Americans need a visa to and they definitely don't make it easy for you another place where the visas were very hard and complicated for me to get was throughout West Africa so I did a big or two big road trips and all throughout this I had no visas before I landed so I would go in the country before the next one and try and get the visa that presented a string of like weird events when I was in Gambia I was trying to get a Sierra Leone visa and the Consul General wasn't there so they ended like calling his cell phone and he came just for me to stay up my passport which was very nice at another one in Gambia they ended up giving me half of the cost of the visa because we started talking about religion and the Quran together so he thought you know I shouldn't charge you the full amount he gave me half you know they're the guinea and visa that I got in Passau I had had this long discussion with the Consul General and once he found out what my job was that I do a lot of like education strategies for different companies he he was asking me about like a school that he wants to run and we ended up having this like business discussion for a long time I've never been denied for a visa I think and why I say I think is because one time I wanted to go to Turkmenistan and I got an invitation to go Turkmenistan and I was gonna get a visa and I went to the embassy here in Abu Dhabi and they said okay like come back in three days okay so I went back three days later and I said oh like we needed to see your use BEC like where I was going next we need to see her use Becca visa first it was like okay well like here you know they had an ass so I showed them that and so three days later I go back and they say oh sorry it was actually three days from when it's received in Turkmenistan like okay so now my two-week trip is down to one week I go back and they say okay it's gonna be approved tomorrow Friday in Turkmenistan but because we're Nabu Dhabi the embassy won't be open until Sunday but if I would have left Sunday that would mean I'd have four days to go between both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan so he said okay we're having a barbecue on Saturday you can come to the embassy and I will give you back your passport I said okay thank you so much and I go to the embassy on Saturday and I'm like knocking on the door and this man who I hadn't seen before like the guard he just starts he's like we're closed I'm like oh but the guy told me to come back he's like no we're closed come back on Sunday and he starts script hang at me and I like can't convince him that I was told to come and I he it was just this awful like language barrier and then he ended up like not giving me my my visa and I ended up only going to who's next and for those like four days which was supposed to be two weeks and I end up going to Turkmenistan like a couple years later for a really nice visit which was more easy to get the peace at that time but so maybe I got denied like no idea the hardest visa for me ever to get was to Libya it was supposed to be pretty straightforward I was being invited by a friend and you know they said okay it'll take a few weeks you know call me a few weeks before you want to go I did that and literally everything that you could possibly think of that could happen to delay a visa happening happened to me with Libya first there was you know a lot of you need extra papers you need this translated then it was okay there's four men who have to stamp your your visa to allow you to come and this guy doesn't show up to work this day then he passes it to the next guy and he's on holiday for a week and then this guy like never comes to work and then finally they say okay we have your visa approved they send me a copy of it but it must be sent by diplomatic wire from Tripoli in Libya to Tunis Tunisia where I was gonna pick it up and this ended up taking three weeks because electricity problems and I don't even understand why but basically they just were fear they wouldn't send it to the to the embassy for me to pick up the visa and I was waiting every day I thought it would be that same day and I bothered my friends so much because I kept asking like what is going on like this makes no sense finally they say okay it's been sent so I go to the embassy and the man who stamps me says isn't there so they say oh he might show up like later today or he might show up in an hour we don't know so I sit in the embassy literally for like eight hours and he never comes so the next day I bring my friend with me and we're sitting there with the same people cuz there's other people waiting for eight hours and they keep saying okay he might come in an hour or he's not gonna come at all today and if he doesn't come today it's the weekend you have to wait like four more days to get your visa so we meet they tell us he's not coming and we walk out and luckily we can't get a taxi we're like standing on the street like trying to figure out where to go and somebody else walks out and says hey the man came and he just gave me my visa but the Embassy is closed so we go to the door we know or not correct we know that you're in there and they finally open it they take us upstairs and you know we begged this man you know I've been waiting for like two months now I end up getting delayed for a month having to hang out in Algeria which was awesome but frustrating and finally he stamps a visa and I don't think I've ever been more happy to receive my passport then I was that day - finally after two months of like constant frustration to see my Libyan visa I left the next day to go to Libya and had an awesome time with my friends there and that was definitely the hardest visa for me to get in the most frustrating experience I want to make a couple quick disclaimer 'he's so one is that there's a handful of visas that are normally hard for Americans that were easy for me so those are because either I was working in those places or because I was travelling as a guest of friends of mine so for example Saudi Arabia and Syria and Bhutan are two places that are often expensive or impossible or difficult to get to but because I was invited by friends of mine from school or from work or because I was going for my jobs the visa process was really easy for a lot of other travelers those are some of the most difficult ones there are also a few countries that are really easy for Americans to go to but are really difficult from for people from other countries to go to so two of those would be Equatorial Guinea which has visa or on arrival only for Americans and nobody else and then Central African Republic which has a similar visa-on-arrival policy for Americans but for almost nobody else you know so of course different travelers at different times they'll have troubles with different visas different processes that they have to go through but this is my story of my the hardest pieces that I have to get I hope you like the stories of the hardest visas for me to get I'm sure you'll like tons of other videos that I have so subscribe down below follow me on Instagram and on Facebook I have tons of photos there so reach out to me let's chat about lots of stuff I look forward to hearing from you

Channel: Sal Lavallo

Views: 491,170

Rating: 4.8463202 out of 5

Keywords: hardest visas to get, travel to every country, visas, visit every country, travel the world, fulltime travel, visit the world, see the world, travel, traveler, india, pakistan, south sudan, eritrea, nauru, sierra leone, west africa, turkmenistan, libya, syria, saudi arabia, bhutan, sal lavallo

Id: isCi672PdUk

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 31 2018