How to Apply for an Indian eTourist Visa

How and Where to Apply for an Indian Tourist Visa

You cannot get a visa upon arrival in India, you must secure one beforehand. Luckily, you can apply online for a minimal fee and have your visa in hand in a matter of days.

After reading this blog thoroughly, please make sure you fill out the visa application perfectly, as the Indian government may still charge you for incorrect applications. If you fill it out incorrectly, you may have to reapply and pay the fee again.

If you need some quick troubleshooting tips, please head to the very bottom of this article.

How long are the India visas good for?

As of 2026, there are 3 lengths of e-Tourist visas available: 30-day, 1-year, and 5-year.  You can only apply for the 30-day visa within 30 days of your arrival; you can apply for the 1 and 5-year visas 4 to 120 days before your arrival. Please apply as soon as you are able and do not put it off (just in case there are any issues that come up that need to be resolved).

How long can I stay?

For the 1 and 5-year visas, each continuous stay during each visit should not exceed 90 days, or 180 days if you are a citizen of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or Japan.

The 30-day visa allows two entries into India within that 30 days. The 1 and 5 year visas allow multiple entries.

Where should I apply? Official Website or App

Start the application by going to https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/tvoa.html and clicking “e-Tourist Visa Application,” the orange button on the upper left. This is the official site.  Googling “Indian visa” will take you to 3rd party sites will lead to third-party sites that may or may not be legitimate.

UPDATE: The website as of early 2026 has been extremely buggy. For that reason, you may wish to apply on their new app, Su-Swagatum.  Here is the app link for the Apple store and here is the link for the Google Play store. 

We will have more direct advice for applying via the app in June 2026. For now, it can be a helpful way to begin the application. If you are running into trouble uploading documents in the preferred PDF format from your phone, you can switch to a computer or laptop using your Application ID to sign in. 

Third-party Sites

If you are having trouble with the application site, there are some legitimate third-party sites that charge a fee to apply on your behalf.

We recommend using Sherpa° for the India visa if you simply can’t bear the official government application! Their fees are much more reasonable (about $47 USD) than other sites.

What materials do I need to apply?

To fill out the application, you’ll need

• information from your passport
• your itinerary (which cites you will be visiting)
• a passport photo of yourself to upload (more on these requirements later)
• a scan of your passport to upload (more on these requirements later)
• a local Indian reference name including address, and phone number (which we will provide to our guests).

For this e-visa, you will NOT need to send your passport anywhere. 

NEW: Online India Arrival Card

As of late 2025, you must complete an arrival card online 0 to 72 hours ahead of your arrival in India. It is relatively straightforward. You can find the link here: https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/earrival/

If you are unsure of your hotel’s state or district, you can search on Google. The contact details are your email and phone number. Please select “tourist” for your purpose.

You will get a QR code after you submit this form online; please show that QR code (on your phone is fine) to your immigration officer upon landing.

Here is what the arrival card form looks like:

Let’s get started!

This is what the site looks like as of early 2026. If the site does not look like this, make sure you are in the right place.

Click on the “apply here for e-visa” button on the bottom left side of the screen:

Understanding the application questions

Please enter the information requested, as odd as you may think some of the questions are.  Here are some hints for questions you may not understand or things to watch out for, screen by screen.  Please read through this entire page before applying for your visa.

There will be commentary between many of the following screenshots, please make sure you are reading this document in its entirety. 

• You will be given five options: eTourist Visa (30 days, 1 year, 5 years), eMedical, eBusiness, eConference, or eMedical Attendant). Please select eTourist of your desired length. You will then be given three choices: please select “recreation/sight-seeing.” (The other choices are meeting friends/relatives and short-term yoga programme. Even if you are on a yoga trip with us, it is not a state-sponsored yoga programme, so please still use “recreation/sight-seeing.”).
• “Do You Have a Chalo India Code?”  Please select No.  
• Make sure your arrival date is correct (it gets tricky with late night/early morning arrivals; that is, if you fly in at 2 AM, make sure you are using the correct calendar date).
• After the initial application page, there will be a red Temporary ID number at the top of each application page. PLEASE write this number down or take a screenshot that you can access later, in case your browser quits unexpectedly or you run into another technical issue. Also, please be aware the difference between capital “I” and the number “1” and lowercase “L,” and the letter “O” and the number “0” in your ID number. In fact, when you first get the temporary ID number, you can copy and paste it in a note, document, or email, so you have the original form of it there.

• “Citizenship of National ID number”–Americans, do not put your Social Security Number here. If your country has a national ID system, put the number here. American citizens by birth, just type “NA.”
• You must enter a religion; don’t worry, no one will test you on this.
• “Visible Identification Marks”: if you have any visible birthmarks, moles, or tattoos that might distinguish you from someone else with your name, you can list them here. You can also put “none.”
• They will ask your education qualification. Here is the translation:
  • Educational Qualification: Select the level of education of the applicant:
    BELOW MATRICULATION = less than 10th-grade education
    GRADUATE = College or university education
    HIGHER SECONDARY = High school education
    ILLITERATE = Not formally educated
    MATRICULATION = 10th-grade level education
    POST GRADUATE = advanced study beyond college or university (MA, PhD, etc.)
    PROFESSIONAL = professional /technical training or certification
• If you are retired, please type “retired” in the Occupation and Employer sections.
• Passport Place of Issue: Please use your home country (the country of the passport you are using, that is. So, if you have a U.S. passport, please just list “United States.”)
• “Have you lived for at least two years in the country where you are applying visa?”  This presumes you are applying for the visa form within your home country/the country that issued your passport; it is referring to your home country, not India. 

• They will ask for your parents’ names, even if they are deceased.

“PRESENT OCCUPATION”: VERY IMPORTANT FOR OUR GUESTS:

The list of professions contains a lot of potential red flags that will delay your visa and require much more paperwork. 

We recommend checking “business person,” “retired,” “worker,” or “self-employed” only, as you see fit. 

If you list charity worker/social worker or anything related to media (writer, publisher, reporter, cameraman, news broadcaster, press, tv producer, etc), you will have problems with your visa.  They want to make sure you’re not doing charity or reporting on a tourist visa. 

As you will simply be tourists on our trips, we think it is entirely within the spirit of the question to only use the most accurate of any of these options: “business person,” “retired,” “worker,” or “self-employed.” Almost anything else is asking for trouble. 

Here is the total list of professions in the drop down menu: Air force, business person, cameraman, charity/social worker, chartered accountant, college/university teacher, defence, diplomat, doctor, engineer, film producer, government service, house wife, journalist, labour, lawyer, media, military, missionary, navy, news broadcaster, official, others, paramilitary, police, press, private service, publisher, reporter, researcher, retired, sea man, security, self employed/ freelancer, student, trader, tv producer, un-employed, un official, worker, writer

• For “Places likely to be visited,” please refer to your itinerary/your trip’s website and simply enter the CITY names, not site names.
• For the question, “Have you booked any room in Hotel/Resort etc. through any Tour Operator?” please select “NO.” This is not a typical pre-packaged itinerary and we utilize many local vendors for each journey. 

• If you have visited India before, you’ll have to enter those previous details. If not, mark “no” and continue.  If you visited India many, MANY moons ago and on a different passport and you cannot recall any details or previous visa number, please use your own discretion if you answer “yes” or “no” to that question. 
• “Countries visited in past ten years”: If you are a very frequent traveler, you can probably keep it to 15 or so. Keep in mind they mostly want to know if you have visited Pakistan.
• When it asks if you’ve visited a SAARC country, those countries are listed in the pull-down menu (they are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal). If the answer is yes, please fill in the information; if no, please mark “no” and continue.
• We’ll provide you the Indian reference name; the other “Reference Name in Home Country” can be anyone at home–your emergency contact is a good idea (if they are not traveling with you). This Indian reference name will be on the first page of your practical orientation. 

Upload your passport-style photo and passport information page photo as per the requirements below.

• If you have a passport-style photo to scan and upload, that is fine. Otherwise, there are other methods to take your own passport photo. Please see this link or check your phone’s app store for Passport Photograph apps.
• These are the requirements listed on the official web page as of April 2025:
  The digital photograph to be uploaded along with the Visa application should meet the following requirements:
  • Format – JPEG
  • Size
    • Minimum 10 KB
    • Maximum 1 MB
  • The height and width of the Photo must be equal.
  • Photo should present full face, front view, eyes open and without spectacles
  • Center head within frame and present full head from top of hair to bottom of chin
  • The background should be plain light colored or white background.
  • No shadows on the face or in the background.
  • Without borders.

• Scanned Bio Page of the passport showing the Photograph and Details.
  • Format -PDF
  • Size: Minimum 10 KB, Maximum 300 KB

(Note: it can be difficult to resize PDFs, which are already inherently large files. You can use this handy online tool to resize your PDFs: smallpdf.com/compress-pdf. Need to resize a JPG? Use this site: http://picresize.com.)

How to pay for my Indian visa?

The cost varies by country, and a bank charge of 2.5% will be charged additionally on applicable e-Visa fees. (Please see the fees for all countries here: https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/images/Etourist_fee_final.pdf or  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_India#Costs_for_visa_applications)

Please be aware that both payment methods (Axis and SBI) only take Visa and Mastercard. If you have problems paying with one, try the other; if you still have problems, there is a phone number for each company under “Payment Help Desk” on the eVisa home page (on the left-hand side).  However, our guests have rarely if ever had any trouble with completing a payment.

Receiving  & Printing your Visa

Within a few days of submitting your application, you should receive an email from the Indian government approving your visa; you must print out this document and bring it with you to present the immigration officer upon landing in India. 

Although the Indian government (as of early summer 2024) is e-mailing you an e-visa approval WITHOUT your photo on it, Indian immigration has been asking people for an approval WITH a photo printout on it.

Here is a way to get a printout with your photo on it:

After you have been approved, go to https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/StatusEnquiry

Check the status of your visa with your Application ID and your passport number, and then click “print status.” A PDF should pop up with a visa approval with your photo on it. Please print that approval and use it for your travels.

Troubleshooting Tips (must read!)

These are the first things to do if you encounter trouble along the way:

1. • If you are having trouble with the application crashing or freezing, try a different browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc).
2. • Turn off any pop-up blockers you may have activated. This is important.
   • Turn off any VPNs you have on.
3. • If you are having generalized trouble, please try clearing your internet cache (please Google for instructions if you are not sure how to do this on your browser).
4. • i vs L vs 1: If you are having trouble inputting your Temporary Application ID, please check to make sure you are using the proper “I”—that is, it could be a capital “i,” a lowercase “L” or even a “1.”  This has been a problem for many guests.

What next? Arriving in Delhi Airport

You have your visa in hand–now you just need to know your way around the Delhi airport! Click here to visit our comprehensive guide (with photos and videos!) about arriving to the Delhi airport. This blog contains tons of useful information, including immigration, baggage claim, and where to buy a SIM card upon landing in India.