Visas

Russia doesn't make itself an easy holiday destination, that's for sure. Getting a visa for your time in Russia is a necessary evil and something I will explain and advise you on this blog entry.

You have to get a visa to visit Russia and these come in 90-day Business types or 30-day Tourist types. Your treatment in Russia will last 30 days at most. The only thing to consider is whether you think something might go wrong with your treatment might have to stay in Russia more than 30 days. This was my thinking and so I decided to get a 90-day visa. Just in case.

If your partner or carer is going to come out and help you, they will sometimes want to come for a few days or weeks at the beginning and then go home during the time you're in isolation to then come back and pick you up at the end. If this is the case, they will need a double entry Visa. All these things are possible but will cost you extra the long run.

In order to qualify to get a visa, you have to have a letter of invitation from someone, an organisation or hotel, in Russia. This letter is a prerequisite for getting a Visa. Usually, the hotel that you book for your carer or yourself (if you're staying there a few days before you go to the clinic) can provide this letter, or the clinic itself can do so. However, these things can be a little bit of a risk and take some legwork to get hold of. /Difficult when many people you will be speaking to won't speak much or any English.

This is why a lot of people who go to Russia to get HSCT and up using companies like Scotts Travel Management to sort out their visas. This is exactly what we did. And we were very happy with the services that they provided. Indeed, Scott's Travel Management now even goes by the name of Scott's Visas. A chap called Waseem Aslam was Incredibly helpful and sorting out our invitation letters at really reasonable rates and checked our Russian Visa applications over to make sure that there were no mistakes at all.

This was money really well spent and I would use the same company again every single time.

Once Scott's have sorted out the invitation letter and checked over your visa applications for any potential errors, you will need to go up to the Visa office in London to actually sort the paperwork out with the Russians.

Living between Portsmouth and Southampton, we needed the whole day to get up to London to sort out the visas and come back down. The actual time spent in the visa office was actually relatively little. They sorted out the visas pretty quickly and didn't really ask any questions. We were wondering whether we would needed to speak about whether we were just going to be on holiday or actually visiting a treatment clinic. In the end, conversation was minimal and no questions were asked.

We got our visas without any hassle at all and headed straight for a Pizza Express.

All told, and this includes our train journeys from the South coast, Scots Visa charges and the Visa costs themselves (these are not cheap at all!), as well as the costs of getting the passports and visas sent back to us, I think we spent about £440 on a 90-day Visa for myself and 30-day visa for Helen.

This is a cost to you will have to take into account.