Kenya Visa

BlountvilleTN

In case you are a globe trotter that likes to have your visas "glued" into your passport, be aware that when you go through the Visa Central company you will get an E-visa for Kenya. It is an 81/2 X 11 piece of paper separate from your passport that you give to the immigration official … you may or may not get it back.


If you DO want the "glued" version, it is best to call Visa Central and request it. I did not see any option for selecting it on their on-line application. The glued version will cost a little more, and take longer to process, but to me it would have been worth the souvenir.


We were on the 21-Jul-18 tour and loved it. Tour director Stacie Knight was Excellent. Be prepared for bumpy and
wash-board roads.

British

Thanks for the heads up. I am surprised to hear that is what they are doing, but if it takes longer for a stick in version, that is not going to work for us on our tour because we are out of the country not long before our K and T tour.
We experienced how inconvenient not having the visa in your passport can be on our tour to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos when a fellow traveler had a paper in hand visa. The tour director kept our passports and gave them to us when we got to the airport, he failed to give this guy his paper visa, he was holding up the line. After a few minutes we spotted our tour director on the other side and was able to hail him over to produce the visa, we barely made the plane.

AlanS

Blountville TN wrote:

In case you are a globe trotter that likes to have your visas "glued" into your passport, be aware that when you go through the Visa Central company you will get an E-visa for Kenya. It is an 81/2 X 11 piece of paper separate from your passport that you give to the immigration official … you may or may not get it back.

That is what you get if you apply directly to the Gov't of Kenya for an evisa. I believe immigration officials must give it back so you can keep it with your passport. You never know, you might be required to show it at another time on tour and when departing the country.

Be careful, there are a number of online vendors providing evisa services that have websites that look like a government website. So if you are not going to go through Visa Central, the correct site is: http://evisa.go.ke/evisa.html

Sealord

In our group they kept all of the eVisa papers, but you can make as many copies as you like. What you end up with is a ‘Namanga’ stamp in your passport, which I prefer to having them take two pages. I had to get a new passport to satisfy the Kenya and Tanzania two blank facing pages rule. I had been trying to preserve pages, but every time I asked an immigration person to not stamp a blank page, they did the opposite. I think they all may have the same genetic flaw. For those who may not know, you can no longer get pages added to your passport ... you must get a new one when you run out of pages.

AlanS

Sealord wrote:

In our group they kept all of the eVisa papers, but you can make as many copies as you like. . . . .

Who was the "they"? Immigration or Tauck?

Sealord

The Kenya immigration people kept the evisa papers. Our TD never had any of the documents or passports. Also, I did not see anyone who did not have the eVisa. I did meet some people who waited until the last minute to get visas and paid extra for expedited visas through Visa Central. You can get two visas to Kenya and Tanzania for three hundred dollars or you can pay around $800 doing it the other way. Take your pick. (;-)