You may also want to keep copies of addresses and phone numbers for
the places where you are staying.
While you might have already arranged transportation,
you can't always rely on this arrangement.
And you don't want to show up at a country at 2 in the morning and
you don't have a driver there.
You have no clue of where you're going, you don't know how to contact them.
Usually people at airports are helpful, but
they might not know exactly where you're staying.
So if you have phone numbers and you don't have a phone, people will help.
So just make sure you have as much information as possible,
printed when you're there.
All right, so let's talk about visas.
You want to use your faculty member or
a primary investigator as your first resource.
But keep in mind that they're not always right.
The most up to date information about the type of visa that you need and
how to apply for them is going to be on the consulate website for
the country that you're traveling to.
So please research the country's requirements and
then follow them to the letter.
This may seem really straightforward,
but each year students struggle with visa requirements.
And this can be especially true for those of you who are looking for
business visas, research visas or longer term visas.
For those countries that have less that ideal relationships with the US or
the country where you're from or the country from which you hold a passport,
processes can take even longer.
So I would recommend taking the consulate's maximum processing time and
adding at least a week or two to that,
especially if you intend to purchase your plane ticket prior to receiving your visa.
So let me tell you a personal story to sort of solidify some of these
things that I've been talking about and put them into perspective.
On a recent trip to Pakistan, I had to acquire a business visa.
And the consulate very clearly says what documents you need to submit and
you need to submit six to seven weeks prior to when you're going to go.
And one of the requirements, at least at the time when I was getting the visa,
was that you had to have proof of plane tickets and purchase your round trip.
So all of this was fine, I did it in advance.
I made sure I had at least that seven week window.
And I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting to get my visa.
I call them, I'm not hearing anything.
And so finally, I am just a couple days away from having to depart and
it's very important that you have your visa.
Because no one's going to let you go anywhere without it.
And I get this call and unfortunately it's a message, I missed the call.
And it says you're missing such and such document and it was a letter and
that they needed.
And I'm thinking, my God, I'm not missing this.
I know I sent it, of course it's there.
And just given the communication, right, well I just wasn't having any luck.
I decide to drive down to DC to check out the situation.
So I go and I bring a copy of the document they say that I'm missing.
And I finally get to speak with someone and they open up my folder and
the document is there, it's in the folder, nothing was missing at all.
But now unfortunately, because of the rules for acquiring a visa for Pakistan,
I have to wait at least another week before I can get an approval.
So I really should have submitted far in advance, and
it didn't matter what I did, pleaded, tried to intimidate.
None of it worked at all and so I ended up having to rebook my tickets,
change my work plan with my colleagues, which was really unfortunate.
And then eventually, I was able to get the visa.
But it did really require some finagling and quite a bit of time.
So just be aware that even though timing requirements are posted on there,
anything that can go wrong could go wrong, so just be prepared for that.
Now I mentioned that there are some countries that request
that airfare be purchased before you submit your visa.
If you can get flexible dates or tickets with nominal change fees,
you should aim to do that.
It's definitely a good priority to have.
But that's not available for every airline and
sometimes flexible date tickets can get really expensive.
So sometimes what you can do is ask a travel agent to
print an itinerary for you.
You can call the consulate and ask if that's enough
to just have a planned itinerary rather than purchasing a flight.
If you have to purchase the flight,
then you really should give quite a bit of lead time when applying for your visa.