Dear oh dear! We are having some Mongolian Visa difficulties

We thought that everything was under control. How wrong we were!!

The fact that we both have a Dutch passport has the added benefit that most countries we do not have to apply for a visa before our trip. Mongolia, however, does require us to apply for a visa before our trip.

The Mongolian government is very specific in this. You cannot apply for a visa more than 3 months before you travel into the country. This small detail has almost unnoticeable caused a lot of trouble for us.

Before 2017 you could apply for a Mongolian visa at the Mongolian consulate in Breda, The Netherland. About an hours drive from our house. After 2017 the rules have changed and you now need to travel to Brussels for a visa application in person. This would cost us at least two days in travelling and a lot of frustration with Belgian drivers, motorways and unnessesary hastle.

We decided to go for the higher priced but cosy and no hastle option of delegating this task to a bureau.

All seemed fine until we received a call from the bureau stating if it was correct that we would enter Mongolia before the 11th of August?

Something had gone terribly wrong because we were planning on entering Mongolia on the 13th (if all goes well and we aren't stuck somewhere on route with a broken car and will..).

A misunderstanding was evident and our passports are currently somewhere at the Brussels embassy awaiting renewed dates if possible

We have no idea when our passports will be returned and we still have our Russian visa to finalize

Everyone please think happy thoughts and pray that our passports will be back on time

To be continued.....