So, after a long and seemingly endless trail of crimson, soviet-style red tape, I finally got my visa for the Russian Federation. Sometimes, I question my own sanity when I wait weeks and cough up serious dollars to spend a very limited period of time in a county. In the case of Russia, getting a visa cost me personally nearly $300, countless trips to the Embassy here in Ulaanbaatar and a good amount of my time in order to spend less than a week on Russian soil. Many of the travel forums such as Boots N All, Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree and even the LP Mongolia guidebook itself warn about the headaches involved in trying to obtain a Russian visa here in Ulaanbaatar, but given our route and timeframe, we did not really have much choice. Besides, the Russian Embassy in Beijing reportedly no longer issues visas to foreigners at that particular location and trying to obtain a visa before we entered China would have been pointless considering we did not really know when they were going to let us in.
In order to try and avoid some of the headaches of the Russian visa process here in Mongolia, Steve and I applied online for a double entry business visa. The business visa would allow us some more flexibility in case we needed to change our route heading west towards Europe. Obtaining a Russian visa requires obtaining an invitation letter, but this is a formality and mostly just a scheme for people to make money… more on this later. Steve and I paid $90 a piece for the visa invitation letter which took about two weeks to process. The company told us ahead of time that some Russian Embassies and consulates only accept original copies of the invitation letter when processing a visa, but since we were on the move in China, we did not really have a place for the agency to send the originals. We asked if the agency could mail or fax the invitation letter directly to the embassy in Ulaanbaatar, but apparently, the embassy tends to loose such documents so they would not send them there. As a result, we told the agency to send us electronic copies of the invitation letter and we would try our luck at the embassy… if that did not work, they could send the letters to our guesthouse.
We arrived in Ulaanbaatar and of course, the Russian Embassy did not accept copies, so we had to have the originals sent somewhere. Steve was heading to the states shortly to take care of some TWBR business and we determined that it was best for him to try and get his visa processed there. Steve spent another couple hundred bucks to get his visa rush processed in the US and has his visa in a few days. I on the other hand, was staying behind in Mongolia so had the letter sent to me. It cost $75 to ship the letter via UPS express service which I needed to do… 5 business days for the letter to arrive here and another 7 for the embassy to "rush" process the application – normal processing time at the embassy was 12-15 days. (By the way, the amount of time needed for the Russians to process a visa here is total b.s., because they typically do not perform any type of background checks on visa applicants and in our experience, processing can usually be completed next-day for a higher price. This was the case with China, and even here in Ulaanbataar, we obtained Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan visas in 24 hours without paying extra, but apparently no can do with the Russians.)
I waited for a weeks, however, according to UPS parcel tracking, my invitation letter was somewhere in the Philippines and had been so for about 5 days. Maybe someone had dropped the letter and it got kicked under a desk, but whatever the case, it definitely was not here in Ulaanbaatar. Time was starting to become an issue so I was forced to abandon my quest for a business visa and instead start the process of obtaining a tourist visa. The only place to get a tourist visa application and the required invitation letter in Ulaanbaatar is a place called Legend Tour. I had read a few threads on forums about the hassle involved with going through Legend Tour, but everyone here in town said it was a piece of cake and that Tatiana is very helpful.
The process of obtaining a visa at Legend Tour was pretty straight forward: pay $120, copy the application form they provide substituting your personal information when necessary and come back in 9 days. If everything had worked out with the business visa, it would have cost me $120 to get the actual visa at the embassy anyway, so I wasn’t too bummed about having to fork over another $120 and Tatiana was indeed very nice.
Well, I am happy to say that today, on the 9th day, I got my tourist visa for the Russian Federation as promised. As for my business visa application letter, UPS still indicates it being in the Philippines nearly two weeks after it shipped via express service from Moscow. I contacted the company who issued the letter about my lack thereof and they said they would look into it… that was five days ago and I do not really expect to hear back from them nor receive any sort of refund.
My Passport is starting to fill up at the expense of my sanity
In the end, I probably should have just paid for a tourist visa here in Mongolia and saved myself $165. However, after finding out a little more about the Russian visa process here in Mongolia, I learned that it can change at a moments notice and is far from reliable. Rumor has it that amidst budget problems back home in mother Russia, the Foreign Ministry stopped or reduced the pay embassy staff in Mongolia and other countries received for processing visas. Because they were not getting paid, staff turned visa applicants to tour companies like Legend who in many cases charge 2-3 times the "normal" price of the visa, but the cost is really for the letter. After issuing a visa invitation letter, the tour company would then send the applications back to the embassy along with a chunk of the fee they had collected in effect, covering the diminished portion of the embassy worker’s paycheck. Depending on how things are going, the tour company’s fee and the cut sent to the embassy can fluctuate quite a bit, so the cost of a letter/visa one day is not necessarily the same the next. Rumor also has it that many of these tour company operators are somehow "connected" to embassy staff or diplomats. Many people here in town frequently speculate about just what type of connections Tatiana has. Thankfully for me, I seem to have come on a good day.
Situations such as this that make you take a step back as say wow… if this is what it is like dealing with Russian officials on the outside, maybe all of the rumors of corrupt cops, disgruntled border guards, curious ex-KGB mafia thugs and general disorganization are true. At any rate, with my Russian visa in hand, I guess I will all find out about that other stuff in a weeks time.
