Know your stuff! A traveling hint from the Wandering Writer

I won't lie to you, out there it is a jungle, and not everyone is there to be friendly as he seems, particularly if we are talking about someone running a business.

So far we have organized all our travels by ourselves, and travel agencies had become useful only at our destination, whether it was Africa or Asia, particularly in remote places or where there would have been a concrete danger for our security. Never we asked help to organize our travel around Europe North and South America.

This time was different, as we are heading to Russia and Chechnya at the end of this year. To obtain a visa to Russia, you have two choices, the first is to go directly to the Consulate and make the request (it takes about one month to get back your passport, admitted that your application hasn’t been rejected), or do everything through travel agencies (it takes 10 days, and the chances of having it rejected are slimmer).

In normal situations, we would have chosen the first option planning the trip four months in advance, but since my husband has been for a long period in the hospital, this couldn’t be arranged, so we needed to do this fast.

Moreover, if you choose to go directly to the Consulate, you must provide an invitation letter from all the cities you are going to visit, and that becomes very difficult unless you have a friend there who can provide you with this invitation. We had none.

For this reason, we chose a travel agency.

Our plan:

Leaving with the night train from Helsinki and stay in Moscow for three days, take the flight to Grozny and stay there for a few days, returning to Moscow for the end of the year celebrations and stay there a few days more to visit what we missed on the previous days.

Chechnya, even if it is called the Republic of Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation, regardless this detail the agency asked us more money for the visa to Chechnya (!!!)

WHAT???

No way in hell! That was my answer.

If the issuer of the visa is the Russian consulate, then the visa to Russia is more than sufficient to travel all over within its Federation boundaries. Second, if we would have needed a visa, this should have been issued by the consulate of Chechnya, which doesn’t exist.

Now, you have no idea about the big fight that happened between the travel agent and us. We also sent him a reply from the Russian Consulate that there isn’t such a thing as a visa for Chechnya. He felt so bitter that we found out his cheat, that also started to reply impolitely to us. Well, we felt anyway amused at this point.

Please, and I repeat, please, do yourself a favor and check all the facts before booking a trip with a travel agency. First, check whether you really need one, and second get informed about everything you need to pay for, how much does it costs, and what you DON’T need to pay for. Many agents are very professional people and will do everything to make you save time and money, but together with those individuals, there are also those who will try to fool you to get some extra money for themselves. Since you cannot distinguish the one from the other, get informed with every detail of your trip, with the Consulate rules for the visas, and get a list of all the documents you will need in order to obtain it. Never let people catch you off-guard.

Stay safe, don't let other people fool you, and have a great weekend!!!