Visas | Embassies

If you bring your own car into Iran and are staying for more than 14 days you now have to get Iranian number plates. On the border they just tell you that you have to go the police station and get them. What you have to do is go to the office giving out carplates. You don't have to bring your car. Expect it to take several hours. I paid 250 000 rials. This has nothing to do with insurance or being a tourist. It applies to everybody driving a car with foreign number-plates.
Jan Isaksen, Norway (Oct 05)

Bajgiran border - The info in the LP is not all correct. For instance, the distance between the Iran and Turkmen borders is not 30km as in LP but hardly 5km. There are no buses or minibuses, but there are occasional cars that will take you across. We had little problems crossing the border but had to pay for our car (that we didn't have!). Everybody has to pay US$10 for the car, so this seems to be an officially approved bribe. At the moment however, the country has closed its borders because of SARS.
Marc Glaudemans & Marijke Dijkgraaf, Netherlands (Jun 03)

Iranian visas are easy enough to obtain in Ankara, Turkey, provided you can get a letter of recommendation from your embassy. The Iranian embassy is open 8am-4pm (with an hour lunch break), closed Fridays and Sundays. The phone number is 468-2820, and there's a nice, helpful English-speaking Iranian man who works there. Tourist visas take about one week to process, cost US$50, and are good for a month in Iran. Transit visas cost only US$30 and take less than a week to process, provided you can show your visa for the next country on your trip (like Pakistan, for example).
Anna Piller, Turkey (May 03)

We had no problems getting a visa in Zagreb, Croatia. Staff were very polite. We just needed to fill in one form for the visa. After that we had to wait 7 days and than we got the visa. We payed around 50 euro. Also, if you are in hurry I think that there will be no problem with issuing the visa more quickly.
Boris Josipovic, Croatia (Apr 03)

The border crossing into Iran is a breeze on the Iranian side (took me 5 minutes) but on the Turkish side they rely on their computers to enter your name in and they have power only sporadically. I waited for an hour until the power came back. On the Iranian side you get an immigration card but no customs form.
Ralf Schwate, Germany (Apr 03)

The Turkmenistan Embassy takes up to 10 days to issue a transit visa - better to try and get this in Islamabad or Delhi where they can do it in 3 days for a surcharge.
Tanya Paterson (Feb 03)

Bushehr: visa extension is now available in the police head office at Qods Square. I got mine in 2 days, but it is a business visa as I am here for some months working for a Dutch company.
Wendy Gootjes, Netherlands (Feb 03)

The visa situation appears to be somewhat erratic with some people getting their visa in a matter of days while others had to wait up to six weeks. It took us six weeks to get our visa mainly, I think, because we applied in France. We had to use an agency here and they would only forward the application for us because we could prove that we had a house in France. They initially advised us to return to Australia and apply from there!! We paid 75 euros each for their service. They were helpful but this is rather high. The visa charge was an additional 60 euros and we had to pre-book a % of our hotel accommodation with them. A Norwegian we met had no problem but an English woman waited over 4 weeks, as did another French couple. A young man cycling around the world applied in Ankara and got it after only 3 days for US$30.

We were informed by another couple that the transit visa that they picked up in Ankara could not be extended. They had 5 days to get to Pakistan!
Margaret & Michael Clark, Australia (Feb 03)