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Central Immigration
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Central Immigration
in Baneswar handles all trekking permit and visa extension applications in Kathmandu. Application hours are Sunday through Thursday, 10am to 2pm (1pm in winter), and Friday 10am to noon. You can retrieve your passport later the same day. The queues can be distressingly long in the busy seasons - especially on either side of the Dasain holiday in October, when the office closes for at least a couple of days. All fees are payable in rupees, and at the time of writing there was no bank anywhere nearby. Roving guys with Polaroid cameras can supply instant passport-sized photos for about Rs150.
Travelling out to Baneswar and back twice in one day is a drag. By bike it takes about fifteen minutes each way from Thamel, but watch out for the one-way streets. Taking taxis adds up because it'll cost about Rs80 each way, and that's if you can get the driver to use the meter. By tempo, you have to get on at Kantipath near the GPO, and ride until Purano Baneswar. A few agencies in Thamel and along Tridevi Marg will do the whole job for you for an extra fee of anywhere between $3 and $10 (it's negotiable), plus whatever outrageous bakshish the immigration wallahs are demanding for back-door service (currently $11) - a lot of money in anybody's book. The whole process involves much less brain damage in Pokhara, so do it there if you can. This Central Immigration location was chosen in haste in 1998, so there's a good chance that it will change again. The office used to be on Tridevi Marg, just east of Thamel, in a building that the government had seized from an accused drug smuggler. The alleged smuggler challenged the seizure, the case went to the High Court, and the government was ordered to give the building back Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Nepal,
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