Or you get lucky!

I jumped the queue (of 77) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan in full biking gear in the boiling August 2011 heat and simply asked if I could have a tourist visa and presented my paperwork (visa form and tour agency invitation).

I don't know if they were unaware of the nominal requirement for UK citizens to apply in the UK or simply wanted my stench out of their office but they were OK with it. I then pushed my luck and asked for an urgent visa which turned the 10 day turnaround into two!

I accept that there may be a complex matrix involving nationality, current location and the type of visa involved but it does no harm to ask!

Cheers,

Ian

As simple as that? No confirmed accomodation?

Also within the 'complex matrix' is you say you got a Tourist Visa.
Tourist Visas are only valid for 30 days maximum.

For most HUBB travellers this is insufficient for crossing Russia, and probably back, other than making it a race with time instead of seeing the country - with no exit/re-entry.
So the longer 90 day Business Visa is recommended. Even a one year one so detours into Stans and Mongolia don't eat into the 90 days.

But Russia being Russia there will always be someone who got away with doing it differently and beat the rules, bribes or not - it's the nature of the country.
When planning your journey you decide if you want to have everything properly done and in place or take risks about being able to complete your trip as you go - in which case it comes down to "Do you feel lucky, ****?"

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Yes!

To be fair, the tour invitation does suggest I was going to spend the entire 30 days in a hotel in Yekaterinburg but I had nothing to do with the hotel (I didn't book anything or pay the hotel anything and went to a different hotel in Ykb anyway, just 1200RR to the agency for the invitation). I can't read Cyrillic well enough to discover how the invitation indicates I was going to arrive in RU (eg. by air) but I was stomping about the embassy in riding gear and MX boots which should have given the overland nature of my trip away.

I'll be honest, I was quite surprised myself. I'd contacted the RU embassy in London before I left and noted that I'd have been out of the UK for a couple of months before I could use any RU visa and they told me to apply in Dushanbe/Bishkek/wherever I was at the time. The "rules" for visa applications are all in flux so by the time I was in TJ the word on the street was pretty negative so I was debating DHL'ing my passport back to the UK (and subjecting a friend to wasting half a day down at VFS -- a huge inconvenience even if they already live in London!) but even then my nominal employment status (self-employed) suggested I might have needed to make a personal visit.

Pitching up at the embassy and asking politely seemed like a cheaper first alternative!

Indeed, which is why I added the type of visa to the matrix.

I vaguely recall that you couldn't get a business visa if you'd not been to RU before so a tourist visa, for me, was a must. But my memory is failing me and I picked up a few visas on that last trip so I could be mixing things up.

Cheers,

Ian