Arriving in Cairo, Egypt: A Tale of Two Visas

Dec 16

9-10 December 2019

As we begin our adventure of cycling across Africa, one of the first orders of business is to get permission to be here. Many of the countries that we will be passing through have special quirks when it comes to their visa processes. In addition, the particulars often vary based on the citizenship of the applicants, and the port of entry (especially whether you enter overland vs. via an airport). As a result, it was really helpful to do some research in advance, to have some idea about how to secure the required visas before jumping on our bikes and pedaling towards the horizon.

On the other hand, there’s quite a bit of old and outdated information floating around on the internet. You never know when a country is going to change its visa requirements. Most of the time, it’s just a matter of changing the fees. But sometimes a country in transition will make big changes that affect when and where visas can be obtained, as well as the terms of the visa (such as its duration).

In our case, the country in transition was Sudan. Sifting through the results of a browser search about Sudanese visas turned up quite a bit of conflicting information. We were fortunate to be in contact with other cyclists who had recently run the gauntlet, and successfully gotten their visas. Without their help, obtaining our own visas would have been a much more daunting task.

In the end, the processes for securing the Egyptian and Sudanese visas could hardly have been more different. Here is a summary of how it all came together for us.

Easy Egyptian Visa: You Pay, You Can Stay

Egypt is one of the wonderful countries that offer visas upon arrival for visitors of many nationalities. We were able to obtain our visas through a relatively painless process, right in the airport.

We arrived at Cairo International Airport (CIA) around 15:00 in the afternoon on 9 December 2019. For some reason the architects who designed CIA thought passengers would want a bit of exercise after their airplane ride. It seemed like we walked a mile before finally reaching the immigration area, lugging all of our carry-on baggage along multiple moving walkways and down a set of stairs. On the bright side, the brisk walk might help you feel more awake if you arrive on a late-night flight.

Once we finally arrived in the immigration hall, everything went smoothly. At first we were a bit confused by the signs saying that we should go to the banks to obtain our visas. But sure enough, there are a couple of service windows on your left as you approach the immigration area that are run by banks, where the visa stamps are sold. It doesn’t seem to make any difference which of the banks you use. They all provide the same visas for the same price.

The most important thing to know before you head to Egypt is that the visas cost $25 USD per person. And they only accept US dollars. Period. No euros. No Egyptian pounds. No credit cards. Just US dollars. This is probably the one thing that could trip you up when purchasing a visa on arrival in Egypt. The full list of what you need to get an Egyptian visa is:

Your original passport, valid for at least six months from your arrival date in Egypt, with at least one blank page
$25 USD per visa application. It’s best to have exact change.

We walked up to one of the bank windows, handed over our passports and our payment, and the guy behind the counter slapped an Egyptian tourist visa sticker in each of our passports. No words were exchanged. The whole transaction took no more than a fraction of a second. We‘re now legally allowed to stay in Egypt for 30 days.

Next we headed over to the immigration gates. There were no long lines, and there was no wait. The officer behind the desk took our passports, and thumped our visas with an arrival stamp. Our 30 days as tourists in Egypt had just begun.

We made it to Cairo! I’m now pondering how to secure a Sudanese tourist visa, while soaking up a view of the Nile River. Cairo, Egypt. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.

Note: It also is possible to apply online for an Egyptian e-visa in advance of your arrival, which allows you to pay by credit card and is an efficient way to get a visa if you are a citizen of a country that is not eligible for a visa on arrival. We did not use this process, in part because we didn’t have an easy way to print the documents. But if you don’t want the hassle of worrying about the US currency for a visa on arrival, applying online for an e-visa may be a good alternative.

Sudanese Visa in Cairo: Bureaucracy in Action

In contrast to the pure simplicity of the visa process for Egypt, the Sudanese process is a masterpiece of bureaucratic complexity. Whereas it took us only a minute to get our Egyptian tourist visas, it took us a full day to get the Sudanese visas. But we’re not really complaining. In the recent past, the process for getting a visa for Sudan often took several days. So the ability to complete it in a single day is actually pretty great. And since there was a change in the government in Sudan this past year, we are very grateful for any permission to visit the country.

A key to getting a Sudanese tourist visa in just one day is having all of the required documents ready in advance. If you don’t have all of the necessary attachments and proper form of payment, you application may be delayed. Here’s the full list of required documents to apply for a Sudanese visa in Cairo:

Your original passport, valid for at least six months beyond your intended departure date from Sudan, with at least two blank pages
One photocopy of your passport
One photocopy of your Egyptian tourist visa (the stamped sticker in your passport)
Two original, recent passport photos (we got our photos taken in Istanbul)
$150 USD per application. Only new US bills are accepted, exact change is recommended, and like Egypt, you cannot use any other form of payment. No euros. No Egyptian pounds. No credit cards. Just US dollars. Plan ahead.
Name and contact information for a hotel in Sudan where you plan to stay. For some, a Letter of Invitation from a hotel or tour operator in Sudan is also highly recommended.
You should also bring a pen (to fill out the application). Consider bringing a snack and something to drink for the long wait.

For tourists from many countries, a letter of invitation may not be required. But it was unclear to us which countries, if any, still require a letter of invitation. We solved the problem by booking a reservation at a hotel in Khartoum, where we planned to stay. The Acropole Hotel was easy to work with, but they did require an advance deposit on our room, payable via bank transfer directly into their account. It was worth it for us to have the peace of mind. Once the deposit was paid, they sent us a formal Letter of Invitation as an email attachment, confirming our reservation at the hotel. We brought printed copies of the letter to include with our visa application. Note: we had read online that a Letter of Endorsement from our embassy was required, but this is not true. The Letter of Invitation from the hotel worked fine.

We applied for our visas at the Embassy of the Republic of Sudan in Cairo, which is located in the Al Doqi district of Giza. We arrived at about 8:45 in the morning, and people were already queueing up on the street, waiting for the embassy to open at 9:00 am.

We found a spot on the narrow, dusty sidewalk across the street from the embassy and settled in for the wait. The entrance to the embassy is protected by a line of metal gates, with a couple of armed guards keeping an eye on things. As opening time approached, one of the guards waved at me and the other women who were waiting, suggesting that we could have a seat inside the metal gates, and have first entry into the embassy. At first I went over to wait with the other women. But after thinking it over, it seemed smarter for the two of us to stick together, rather than initiate our visa applications separately, so I moved back outside the gate to wait with PedalingGuy.

While I had been away, PedalingGuy met Kelvin from Arizona, an expatriate living and working in Egypt who was planning to visit a friend in Sudan. Lucky for us, Kelvin could speak and read some Arabic. He had also picked up his visa application form the day before, and so he had some idea of how things worked, which would turn out to be very helpful.

The group of the women were allowed to enter the embassy at about 9:15. Then, around 9:30, they opened the gates and the crowd waiting on the street rushed forward.

There are two entrances to the embassy. The one for visa applications is on the left. There aren’t any signs to clarify this, but we had heard about the two entrances before arriving and knew it was important to enter through the correct door. We also found out that Kelvin had entered through the wrong door (the one on the right) the day before, and ended up wasting a bunch of time before getting sent over to the door on the left. We were glad not to make that mistake.

Inside was a waiting room with about 50 chairs, and five service windows along one of the walls. Visa applications are handled by the line on the far left, with the sign “Immigration Officer” in the window. Plan on spending a lot of time in that line. Here’s how it went for us.

First time through the line, get the application form: We queued up with about 20 other people in the “Immigration Officer” line around 9:30 in the morning. The Immigration Officer finally showed up and opened the service window at about 10:15. On our first trip through the line, all we did was get the form we needed to fill out (one for each of us). We found a quiet spot in the embassy’s courtyard where we completed the form. The layout of the form is a little bit confusing because all of the questions appear in both Arabic and English. And the embassy staff speak very little English, so it was not really possible to ask questions. We took our time filling in the form, just to be sure we didn’t make any mistakes.
There is a section of the form that asks you to provide the name and contact information for a sponsor. This is where you can fill in the name of a hotel where you plan to stay while in Sudan. For people from many countries, additional documentation probably is not needed. We brought along proof of our reservation in the form of a Letter of Invitation from a hotel in Khartoum.
Second time through the line, find out you need to make another copy: With our forms filled out, we waited again in the same line, planning to submit our applications. But when we got to the front of the line, the Immigration Officer took one look at our applications, held up the form, and said, “copy, copy!” He meant that we needed to submit the original form plus a copy of it as well.
So, we headed a couple of blocks down the street to a small shop that was doing a brisk business copying people’s documents and passports. There was a steady stream of people scurrying back and forth from the copy shop to the embassy, which made the shop easy to find. We got our application forms copied there for 4 EGP/copy (about 25 cents), then headed back to the embassy line.
Third time through the line, submit your documents for review: This time it worked. We submitted our completed forms, copies of the forms, passports, copies of the passports, copies of the Egyptian visas, passport photos and hotel letter of invitation. By this time it was a about 11:15 in the morning.
Then we waited.
Fourth time, new line to pay: Shortly after noon, we were called up to the window to receive our paperwork. It had been reviewed for completion, and we were now asked to pay for the visas at the cashier’s window (which is set in the wall on the right). Unfortunately for us, the cashier had gone to pray, so we had to wait a while for him return. The fee for a Sudanese tourist visa is $150 USD per visa, payable only in US dollars. Just like the Egyptian visa, no other currencies and no credit cards are accepted. We paid the fee and were handed a receipt. By now it was around 12:45 in the afternoon.
Fifth time through the line, resubmitting the application for approval: We got back in the Immigration Officer’s line to resubmit our paperwork, this time with the receipt showing that we had paid.
Around 14:00 in the afternoon, the Immigration Officer called over all of the visa applicants and told us something in Arabic. In English, the only instructions that were given was the word, “Four!” We weren’t sure what this meant. But Kelvin was able to ask one of the Arabic speakers, and found out that we were being told that our visas would be ready at 16:00 (4:00pm).
That left us with a couple of hours to kill. We hadn’t brought anything to eat or drink, so after thinking it over we decided to make a quick dash back to our hotel, which was about a 40 minute walk (or a 30 minute very brisk trot) away. We hustled back to our room, took about 20 minutes to gather ourselves, drink, snack and rest, then scurried back to the embassy. By then it was 15:45 in the afternoon.
Sixth time through the line, visas approved! They didn’t quite make it by 16:00. But at 16:30, all of the visa applicants - including us - were called up to the window to receive their approved visas. All of the passports that had been given a visa stamp were handed out at the same time, so there were about 25 people waiting with us all day. It didn’t seem to make any difference that Kelvin had completed his application in advance - he got his visa at the same time we did.

The final step was to figure out what the terms of our visa really were. They were written in Arabic. So, Kelvin helped us translate the text. The visa says that it’s valid for the next 60 days (until 9 February 2020), and that the duration of the visa is 60 days.

We initially thought that the two things (validity and duration) were concurrent, and that our visas would run out on 9 Feb 2020. That would have put us on a really tight schedule. But after conferring with some other travelers we were assured that, in fact, the validity dates simply mean that we must begin our travel in Sudan by 9 Feb 2020, and that we have 60 days in the country once we cross the border into Sudan. That’s fantastic news. We should easily be able to cycle across Egypt and reach Sudan before that date. And 60 days will be plenty of time to cycle across Sudan. We’re pretty happy with how things turned out.

One final thought is that visa requirements can be pretty fluid over time in some countries. So even though this was our experience, yours may vary. Try to stay flexible.