Recently Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have tried to make things easier for traveler's especially from certain countries and thankfully UK is one of them. You can apply for tourism visa which is valid for Umrah too, which is nice. Visa can be applied through the official visa site https://visa.visitsaudi.com/ I applied an e-visa. We were a family of 4 so I created a group with our last name, the only information needed was name, date of birth, address, passport details and what type of visa was required we selected 'Umrah' you can choose tourism and business as well. You need to choose an address where you will stay, this can be your Hotel too - thats what we used.
The only tricky part was getting the photographs ready to upload for the application, the photos needed to have a white background and max 200px x 200px there are instructions on the visa site - I suggest you create an account first and download the details of pic requirements for offline reading.
There are many website and some free ones that allow you to upload your image and download a cropped image, many photo studios also do this service now, I used my computer and the gimp (https://www.gimp.org/) which is a free software available for Windows and Mac.
Getting the photos ready was the hardest part for me as I am not an expert but with trial and error and youtube videos i did it myself, you also need to get a medical insurance along with the visa which is required. Just be aware this does not replace your travel insurance, I think this is for use when you are in the kingdom and there is a medical emergency.
Btw there was no choice and paying for this insurance was a must.
The good thing is after you complete the application and make payment the time it takes for visa decision is just a few minutes, you get the visa in the email you gave when you submitted your application. One thing to note though the type I requested the visa was 'umrah' I got a tourist visa, that was a little confusing but i guess as now you do not need a special umrah visa and you can do umrah on a visit visa it is understandable.
There are some issues we were told like for eg. how much ZamZam water you are allowed to bring etc, but we will know if that is an issue.
Comments
Post a Comment