Getting a visa for Eritrea can be a trial…

Since its independence in 1993, and particularly since its crackdown on free press in 2001, Eritrea has become a difficult place to visit.  Uganda is the only country whose citizens can enter Eritrea visa free, and only Sudanese nationals are able to get a visa on arrival at Asmara International Airport*.  For the rest of us, getting a visa for Eritrea is an onerous task, often involving months of back and forth between an Eritrean Embassy, or even the Foreign Ministry in Asmara.  Getting an Eritrean tourist visa certainly involved jumping through more hoops than any other visa process I’ve undertaken – but it certainly isn’t impossible.

In coming months and years, I believe the process for obtaining and Eritrea visa will become much easier – due largely to the fact that Asmara has been recently anointed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, thanks to its concentration of modernist and futurist architecture.  Truthfully, the UNESCO inscription should be enough to start the inflow of tourists into Eritrea, but there’s plenty to occupy one’s time in Eritrea that isn’t architecture-centric. David and I found the people in Eritrea to be the nation’s real draw. Because tourists are still an oddity in Eritrea, even at Asmara’s most famous sites (Fiat Tagliero, Cinema Impero, the Central Market, etc.), the people are extremely warm and welcoming, as well as always willing to stop and chat over a macchiato at one of Asmara’s many coffee shops, always equipped with the most state of the art espresso machines imported from their former colonial ruler, Italy.

As it stands, however, a visa for Eritrea remains as one of the most difficult to obtain in the world.  The internet is full of horror stories of visa rejections without explanation, or of folks receiving their passports back with a visa the day of their departure.  Stephen Lioy, a writer and traveler based in Central Asia, had to fly from his home in Central Asia all the way to Washington D.C. to obtain his in person because the Foreign Ministry wouldn’t issue a visa to an American living overseas from any Eritrean Embassy outside his home country (also, find his amazing photos from Eritrea here).  This guy tried to enter Eritrea without a visa (how they let him on the plane in the first place, is beyond me).  But my favorite story of rejected Eritrean visas comes from famed country-counter Gunnar Garfors, who received an exuberant note attached to his passport upon retrieval. It read, “Hellow! Your visa is rejected.” 

All that’s missing was a smiley face emoji.

Eritrea was an important destination for me – one that made the prospect of a bureaucratic onion of a visa application process more palatable.  I’d longed to photograph its architecture, interact with locals, and have a passeggiata along Harnet Avenue for several years when we started the application process, and was ready to apply the full brunt of my compulsive tendencies to it.

So, with that verbose introduction, here are the rules I followed to successfully get a visa for Eritrea.  Please note that this guide is from the perspective of a U.S. passport holder applying through the Eritrean Embassy in Washington, D.C.  Depending on your nationality and what Embassy you’ll be applying through, your experience may vary – but I contend that having a well-prepared, researched application will benefit anyone attempting to obtain a visa to this emerging African destination. 

**If you want to skip to the end, I’ve added a recent anecdote of Vilde and Anne, two Norwegian women we met in Eritrea, who applied for their tourist visas through the Embassy in Stockholm.

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Before you Apply for your Eritrea Visa:

UPDATE November 12, 2018: It appears that Mr. Tekeste is no longer helping tourists obtain visas prior to arrival, rendering this section moot.  An American traveler friend of mine applied without aid from anyone in Eritrea, and was able to receive his visa without incident and very promptly from the Eritrean Embassy in Washington D.C.  However, I am leaving the information below in case he is merely taking a break, or in case visa restrictions become strict yet again in the future.  As of now, however, visas seem to be easier to get than ever before – HURRAY!

The single most important piece of advice I can give regarding obtaining a visa for Eritrea is to make connections.  So, before you even think about applying for your visa, make a relationship with a tour provider (or someone even tangentially related to tourism) in country who can vouch for you.  

I spent the bulk of my correspondence with Mr. Tekeste Asghedom of Asmara Grande Travel.  I reached out to him in June of 2017, more than two months before I sent my visa application to the Eritrean Embassy.  If you’ve done any precursor googling about logistics of travel to Eritrea, you’ve likely come across his name. He works intensively with the Ministry of Tourism and acts as a sort of middleman between visa applicants and the Foreign Ministry – helping to move application processes along to avoid stagnation in the bureaucratic kerfuffle that is the Eritrean government.  Below you can find his name card, as well as his colleague’s, Miss Sara as we knew her – the first step to a successful visa application should be to contact them in regards to your interest in the nation. The extremely kind folks at Asmara Grande travel also arrange visas for tour operators in the region (Lupine Travel and Young Pioneer Tours), so they are absolutely the best people to counsel you on your travel and visa application preparations.

In your correspondence, don’t be shy to show your enthusiasm for Eritrea and why you want to visit.  As is true anywhere in the world, you get more with honey than with vinegar, and if you communicate a genuine desire to visit the place (a little existing knowledge about Eritrea doesn’t hurt, either), your Eritrean visa fixer will be much happier to help you than if apathetic.

We ended up making very detailed plans for a tour with Asmara Grande Travel (which we then scrapped in country, but that’s another story), but I don’t think this reservation was a conditional requirement for helping us with our visas.  We never had to make a down payment or transfer money to Asmara Grande Travel, and only made payment once in country (for a much different tour than the one we’d originally reserved). If you’re interested in visa assistance, but not necessarily a tour, I would still reach out to them for assistance.  Mr. Tekeste and his company are in the business of getting foreign tourists to Eritrea, so every successful visa application they assist with is a victory for their team.

The Eritrea Visa Application

To Start, here is the list of requirements on the Eritrean Embassy website for tourist visa applications:

• Passport (with 6 months of validity past your departure from Eritrea)
• Completed application form
• $50USD in cash or money order
• 1 passport photo
• Self addressed return envelope (with tracking!) for them to return your passport

All pretty par for the course.  Just don’t try sending a personal check.

Here’s a copy of the visa application:

Application_for_Entry_Visa_n_Requirements_2016

Before I sent all of my materials to the Embassy, I got a slightly cryptic note from Mr. Tekeste.  It read, “I hope you will use your ingenuity to respond to [The Foreign Ministry’s] inquiry regarding your application.”

UPDATE November 12, 2018: I still recommend you apply with the additional pieces of application support – in this case these extra steps can’t hurt at worst, and enhance your application at best.

And thus, here’s a list of things I recommend you add to make your application more complete (or completely overkill, depending on your outlook):

• Copy of flights entering and exiting Eritrea (don’t even think about trying to enter overland…seriously)  
• Bank statement proving proof of funds to cover your trip
• Application cover letter
• Bank statement cover letter

This part of the application is actually the important part, I reckon.  It’s where you get to plea your case. And while this plea may seem like a plea for a visa, what it actually is is a plea for expediting the visa process.  The cover letter is also where your relationship building prior to completing your visa application will begin to pay dividends.

Here is the cover letter I wrote to the Embassy – feel free to download and replace with the details of your personal trip:

Eritrea Visa App – Plea

The point of this letter is to twofold: 1) to express your interest in visiting Eritrea and 2) to name drop.  The consul workers in D.C. (or wherever you’re applying for your visa) will be happy to see that you’ve already been in contact with people in Eritrea, especially if it’s someone they know – and Mr. Tekeste knows everybody.  

And here is a copy of the cover letter for my bank statement.  Probably overkill, honestly, but in the case of countries with temperamental visa policy, you cannot be too prepared.  It’s always better to be overdressed than underdressed, the old adage goes, and when literally every man you see on the streets of Asmara is decked out in Italian suits, you better believe you gotta have your shit together.

Eritrea Visa App – Statement of Money

I also took the visa application process as a way to hearken back to writing reports in middle school – a time when the content of the report wasn’t as important as its presentation.  Wrap all of your forms in a tight, clean package, and make sure your forms are signed and dated. Once you’ve got these ducks in a row, you’re ready to mail it off.

An important note for married gay travelers to Eritrea (and other parts of the developing world) is to NOT indicate you are married on your application form.  Gay marriage is not recognized in Eritrea, so if you want to fly under the radar, it’s best to just indicate “single” on your application. Officially, homosexual activity is illegal and punishable by 10 days to three years in prison in Eritrea.  I understand that this is a controversial decision, and that I may be criticized for “hiding” my sexual identity. But to those who boycott going to places with homophobic legal policies in place, I would argue that the goodwill diplomacy spread by these two homos in Eritrea far outweighed any support our tourist dollars might have given Afewerki’s government.  We’re not in the habit of being in the closet anywhere we travel, and found in Eritrea, as almost anywhere else we’ve traveled, people were more than welcoming to us and our relationship after getting to know us on a personal level.

While your Passport is Away

Xanax!

Just kidding.  When you mail your passport, make sure to do so in an envelope with a tracking number.  Watch your passport fanatically. If you’re wealthy, I’d just send it overnight to avoid the misery of having your passport in USPS limbo (takes years off my life every time, I swear), but otherwise, what’s a few days of sweaty palms and sleepness nights?

Once it arrives to the Eritrean Embassy, it’s time to make a new friend!  Call the embassy. Program the number into your phone. Call the embassy again.  You’ll probably get through the third or fourth time you call. (Note: Contact hours for the Eritrean Embassy in D.C. are from Monday-Friday, from 9am to 4pm EST. You’re more likely to get someone if you’re calling an hour after opening or before closing.  Don’t try to get in touch over lunch)

Then, email your friend in Asmara (Mr. Tekeste, I presume?) and let them know that your passport is at the Eritrean Embassy for processing.  All visas have to be approved by the Foreign Ministry in Asmara, and your contact should be able to help things along there. In our case, we needed to provide some additional information (the information needed was on our application forms, but resistance to bureaucratic redundancy is futile), so it was extremely useful to get this information straight from Asmara instead of waiting for that message to filter from Asmara to Washington D.C., and eventually to us, waiting impatiently in Seattle.

Your contact in Asmara should be able to tell you when your application has been approved – and this is information you can take directly to your contact at the Eritrean Embassy.  This will give them a little push to get your passport back to you, otherwise it may sit in their stack of visa applications until who knows when.

If it sounds like you have to be a pest, it’s because you do.  The rule of being nice, curious, and engaged still applies here.  Thank your Embassy contact profusely for their help, and use your phone time to practice how to say “thank you” in Tigrinya. (The closest romanized equivalent? “Yek’en yel’eh.”)

A favorite practice of mine is to create a little shrine to my destination while waiting for my passport to return.  Weird or nah?

Getting your Eritrea Tourist Visa

In total, it took a month to the day from sending our passports out to have them returned with fresh, sparkly, handwritten visas from the Eritrea Embassy.  Definitely a victory for the OCD traveler in me, especially when compared to common online consensus on the Eritrean visa application process.

I realize that some may not have the luxury of completing one’s visa application form from the comfort of their own home, but I believe that the same rules apply for these folks as did us.  Show genuine enthusiasm. Follow the rules to the letter. Take a nice shirt and pair of pants with you on the road specifically to wear to Embassies when applying for a visa. Smile. As a favorite entertainer of mine once said, “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.”

More resources

I’ve recently completed a guide to travel on the ground once you arrive in Eritrea – it’s the most up to date and comprehensive guide on travel in the country (not to toot my own horn) as of September 2018, and I hope to keep it updated as more folks share their personal accounts of travel there with me.  You can find that article here!

This website, managed by a Dutch couple in a long affair with Eritrea, contains the best and most up to date information on tourism in Eritrea.  On their front page, you’ll see a link for Asmara Grande Travel, who we used for help prior to and in-county, as well as links for two other agencies that do similar work, Oasis Travel and Eagle Travel.  I’ve heard from others that Oasis is reliable, and Eagle Travel seems to be a new entrant to the Eritrean tourist market, as I didn’t come across them while planning for our trip.  Very sparkly website, though!

These places are your best bet for finding your initial contact in the country, who will then help with your visa process.  My process in the beginning was to cast a wide net of emails and then see who e-mailed back in the most timely manner.  The winner was Mr. Tekeste, who kept in frequent contact despite trips in Norway, Sudan, and Uganda leading up to our arrival.

Documents for download:

Eritrea Visa App – Statement of Money

Eritrea Visa App – Plea

Application_for_Entry_Visa_n_Requirements_2016

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Visa on Arrival and Other Unfortunate Circumstances

*As of June 2018 it is no longer possible to obtain a visa on arrival, even if traveling with a tour company.  All visas must be obtained ahead of time.  If there is an Eritrean diplomatic mission (embassy or consulate) in the nation that issued your passport, you must apply through that office.  Requirements can be quite strict, however.  See below.

**Below you’ll find an account of applying for a visa for Eritrea by two Norwegian women we spent time with in Eritrea.  More harrowing than our process, for sure:

“Here is the story of our application process:

Since there is no Eritran embassy in Norway, we had to apply to the Eritrean embassy in Stockholm, Sweeden. We applied for visas to Eritrea around the 24th of November 2017. We applied for tourist visas,as opposed to another kind of visa possible. A friend of my mother, who went there in March 2017, applied for another type of visa as she knew someone in Asmara. Then the people she knew were asked to go to a tourist information office of some sort in Asmara to confirm her visit, but no such office excisted. She was then told by the embassy in Stockholm that she could get a visa at the airport in Asmara, which she actually got on arrival. (She ended up paying double price both to the embassy in Stockholm and at the airport in Asmara upon arrival). Because of her experience, we decided just to go for the tourist visa, even though my mother knew people there. Our plan was to travel early in January, eventhough we knew the application  process could take some time. To try to speed up the process,  we phoned the embassy several times. We managed to get through on the phone a couple of times, but mostly nobody answered, which was very frustrating. We had nearly given up and were looking for tickets to Ethiopia, when they finally answerd the phone in the end of December. On the phone we were informed that our applications were accepted, and we were asked to send our passports to the Embassy in Stockholm, which we did by special post taking 3-5 working days. We called a lot to see how the process was getting on, as we continously postponed our travel. On Thursday the 25th of January we got our passports with the visas by special mail. So, in the end of the day we did get our visas within two months from applying, though it was a lot of uncertanty as to if and when we actually would get it.  The lack of service mindedness with the staff on the phone in the embassy, was also a bit discouraging. Luckily we got our visas 36 houres before departing from Oslo and made it to Eritrea!”