Friday, 7th of April 2017

Here is a step-by-step description of how we organised our visas in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia for Sudan and Egypt. Please be advised that the information provided below should only be used as a guideline. I wish you the best of luck!

Egyptian Visa Application

In order to apply for a Sudanese visa, you must apply for an Egyptian visa first (even if you are not going to Egypt).  We applied for a 30-day single entry visa that is valid for 3 months and 30-days once entering the country.

The documents we required for our Egyptian visa:

• Valid passport
• Photocopy of passport (There are a few photocopy machines diagonally across the embassy. 1 Birr per copy)
• Photocopy of your Yellow Fever Vaccination
• 2 Passport pictures
• 700 Birr per visa
• Receipt of ATM Bank machine or money exchange receipt for the aforementioned 700 Birr.

The Egyptian embassy is open for visa applications only from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on weekdays. We arrived with all the aforementioned documents on Monday morning. After a brief security check, we were directed to the visa office. The application took about 20 minutes, you leave all your documents with the office and get a receipt in return. This receipt told us to pick up our visas from the same office on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. No major complications.

We received our visas on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.

Sudanese Visa Application

Heads-Up: At the time of writing there were many refugees at the Sudanese embassy. So expect chaos and many many people. It is important to jump the long queues otherwise you will not get anywhere on time. We applied for a 2-week transit visa as we were not permitted to apply for anything else. The 14-day transit visa is valid for one month and for 14 days once entering the country.

The documents we required for our Sudanese visa:

• Valid passport
• Photocopy of passport (There are a few photocopy machines diagonally across the embassy. 1 Birr per copy)
• Photocopy of your Ethiopian and Egyptian visa
• 2 Passport pictures
• 68 USD per visa (ONLY payable in US Dollar!)
• Contact Details of a Sponsor in Sudan (Full name, address and phone number of a friend or booked hotel in Sudan)

The Sudanese embassy is open for visa applications from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on weekdays. We received our mandatory Egyptian visa on Wednesday. So we arrived at the Sudanese embassy on Thursday. The application took about 2 hours as we had to wait for the lady in charge of the visa payment to arrive. You leave all your documents with the office. We received a receipt of payment and were told to return to the embassy the day after at 2 p.m.

We received our visas on Friday at 2:00 p.m.