Trip to London - options for Paris(if possible Swiss, Belgium)
 

Hi All,

I stay in India, and I have a round trip booked to London, for 22 days.

My visa is multiple entry to UK.

Now, I plan to visit Paris. I would like to know what if I can take an on arrival Visa ?

Or if not, what other options I have?

Or is it better to book a Panoramic Europe package(that includes Swiss, Belgium etc.), and try for a visa separately now ? I have a month before I leave for the trip.

"Now, I plan to visit Paris. I would like to know what if I can take an on arrival Visa ?"

Assuming you have only an Indian passport, you need to get a separate Schengen visa, from a French embassy or consulate, for entry into France, Belgium and Switzerland. As far as I'm aware this can be obtained only at home, though under some circumstances it might be available in London (though it can be a time-consuming process). Your UK visa is no more relevant to a trip to France than an Indian visa is to someone wanting to visit Pakistan.

I doubt whether anyone on this forum will be able to help you about how long getting a Schengen visa takes, or whether there are Indian commercial organisations who can expedite it. But you need to check how to get one now, because a month isn't a long time.

22 days isn't lone enough for four countries even if you can get a Schengen visa.

Stick to the UK since you are already set w/ your visa there. There is more than enough to see/do in the UK to fill your three weeks.

A month seems awfully quick for getting a visa in India but maybe I'm wrong.

I never understand why people come her asking questions about visas.

Visas are legal documents issued by the country to which you are going and only the officials of that country can provide complete and accurate information.

Also, many posters on this board come from countries (US, Canada, Oz, western europe) where visa terms are well-known and standard - and are unlikely to have knowledge of rules governing people from other parts of the world.

So unless the question is very basic - how long can US citizens stay in Schengen as tourists? - we simply do not have the knowledge to provide any useful information.

The embassy or the consulate of the country in question is the only place to go for reliable information.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to reply !

@flanneruk
While I was researching about the Schengen visa, I'd already, foolishly, booked the tour to Europe as well.

It looks like I might face more Visa issues than I'd initially assumed.

There seem to be a lot of requirements to apply for a Schengen visa, especially if it's an add on to trip to the UK and then a detour from there. It looks like a hugely tedious process.

Thank you so very much ! :)

@janisj
We just wanted to do as much as possible in that time, and feel like we've seen a tiny, minuscule part of the world that way !:)

A month is just about enough to be granted a Visa, for UK visas, tourist/general visitor, it is granted in as short as a week !

@nytraveler
I was browsing through the web, and I found a few queries, very similar to my situation, on this site.

So, that's why I posed this question. I wanted to see if anyone had planned something similar like I did, and in such a haphazard manner.

Thank you for taking the time to answer though !

Appreciate it ! :)

"Visas are legal documents issued by the country to which you are going and only the officials of that country can provide."

Wrong

A visitor visa for one Schengen country is valid for the other 25, and it's a common misunderstanding in Asia that that includes the UK. All Schengen embassies and consulates advise about each others' visa requirements to some extent - but many charge, or refer queries to premium-rate phone lines.

The OP's question was "is a UK visa valid for France"? It's a perfectly sensible question, frequently asked by Indians and Chinese, and getting the correct answer from an English-speaking French official in India is certain to be lengthy, expensive, incomprehensible or all three. The OP would have got the answer if he'd asked at the UK High Commission when he got the visa - but he didn't, and asking them now would bankrupt him.

The quickest - and most reliable - way of getting an accurate answer was to ask on the web. He's got the right answer in less time than it'd have taken him to get the French Embassy to answer the phone.