Applying for a Turkish e-visa and crossing the Lesovo / Hamzabeyli border
According to my Bulgarian friends it was unusually hot for an October day. It was 23 degrees at 11:00 in the morning and expected to rise to 27 during the rest of the day.
It was my first time travelling anywhere outside of Europe and only having had 3 days notice of our trip to Edirne, I had not had much to time research the town or Turkey as a whole. I thought I needed a visa to enter Turkey and a quick check on the UK government website confirmed this and helpfully they provided a link to the official website to get one - https://www.evisa.gov.tr/
The application process is simple, all you need is your passport and a credit/debit card. It costs 20 US dollars and the whole process can be completed within 10 minutes. You are immediately emailed a pdf e-visa which you present at the border on your phone with your passport. It's probably a good idea to take a hard copy with you in case your phone runs out of battery.
Even though we arrived at the border relatively early at 09:50 it still took us just over 2 hours to get to the other side. This may have been because people had been avoiding the other border crossing at Malko Tarnovo due to it being closed the day before because the staff had been arrested for corruption. https://www.bnt.bg/en/a/20-customs-officers-arrested-at-malko-turnovo-border-checkpoint
To me, the whole process of traversing the border seemed very inefficient and unnecessarily time consuming with five or six different kiosks to go through, each time having to present passports. I would have thought it could have been done with 3 kiosks - one for Bulgarian passport control, one for Turkish passport control, finally one for customs.
Later that day at 22:00 we returned to Bulgaria via Malko Tarnovo and crossed through border patrol within half an hour - no bribes required ;-)
It was my first time travelling anywhere outside of Europe and only having had 3 days notice of our trip to Edirne, I had not had much to time research the town or Turkey as a whole. I thought I needed a visa to enter Turkey and a quick check on the UK government website confirmed this and helpfully they provided a link to the official website to get one - https://www.evisa.gov.tr/
The application process is simple, all you need is your passport and a credit/debit card. It costs 20 US dollars and the whole process can be completed within 10 minutes. You are immediately emailed a pdf e-visa which you present at the border on your phone with your passport. It's probably a good idea to take a hard copy with you in case your phone runs out of battery.
Even though we arrived at the border relatively early at 09:50 it still took us just over 2 hours to get to the other side. This may have been because people had been avoiding the other border crossing at Malko Tarnovo due to it being closed the day before because the staff had been arrested for corruption. https://www.bnt.bg/en/a/20-customs-officers-arrested-at-malko-turnovo-border-checkpoint
To me, the whole process of traversing the border seemed very inefficient and unnecessarily time consuming with five or six different kiosks to go through, each time having to present passports. I would have thought it could have been done with 3 kiosks - one for Bulgarian passport control, one for Turkish passport control, finally one for customs.
Later that day at 22:00 we returned to Bulgaria via Malko Tarnovo and crossed through border patrol within half an hour - no bribes required ;-)
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| My first time outside of Europe and the first ever stamp in my passport! |
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| A several Kilometre queue of lorries in Turkey waiting to cross the border into Bulgaria/Europe |
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| The Bulgarian side of the border crossing on an unusually hot October morning. |
Thanks for the link and info, good post
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