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Egypt
To visit Egypt, tourists from most countries need to obtain a visa in advance upon arrival or at the airport for $ 30. However, tourists from individual countries arriving in South Sinai – this is the coast from Sharm el-Sheikh to Taba, including the monastery of Santa Catarina and Mount Moses - are provided with free visa-free entry for a period of 15 days. Instead of a visa at passport control, you will simply be given a so-called "Sinai stamp" or "Sinai visa" (Sinai Only), while you do not need to pay anything. However, it should be borne in mind that this stamp assumes being located only in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula, and will not allow you to travel beyond its borders if you want to visit Cairo, the pyramids, Luxor.
You can get a Sianai stamp in your passport at Sharm el-Sheikh Airport, at the seaport and airport of Nuweiba, and at the Taba checkpoint with Israel. Moreover, when entering Egypt from Israel, a tourist is given an exclusively Sinai stamp.
Attention! Enterprising Egyptians manage to impale tourists even with the receipt of a free Sinai stamp, for which a whole scheme works at the airport. After disembarking from the plane in front of the passport control counters, you will be met allegedly by representatives of tour operators and distributed in queues at the counters. They check your documents on the tour, and may require you to pay $ 2-5 to fill out an immigration card. Remember! You don't have to pay anything for an immigration card. If they refuse to give you a blank card and you will not find them in this area (they must be in a public place), then just go to the passport control window without a queue and ask for a blank there.
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Who is stamped with the Sinai stamp?
Officially, the Sinai stamp is not for everyone, but only for tourists from these countries:
- United Kingdom
- USA
- EU countries
- Israel (only when entering through the Taba border crossing)
As you can see, Russia is not on this list. However, in practice, Russians quietly receive a free stamp en masse. What is the reason for such loyalty of border guards to tourists from Russia, we do not know. Perhaps there is some kind of unofficial order or agreement between the Foreign Ministry, but the fact that they put and cases of refusal are very rare is a fact.
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If I got a Sinai stamp, and then decided to go to Cairo and the pyramids, what should I do?
This problem is solved quite easily - you need to apply for a visa already in Egypt, and with it you can easily move around the entire territory of Egypt. Guides and tour sellers will help you with this for $ 35-50, or you can get to Sharm el-Sheikh airport yourself, contact the staff there, and they will paste a visa for you at the state price for $ 30 + you can tip them a couple of dollars for help.
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What to do if they refuse to put the "Sinai stamp"?
Indeed, passport control officers sometimes refuse to put a stamp, although this happens very rarely, at least with Russian tourists. If this happens, then you can simply buy a visa stamp on arrival for $ 30, and all problems will be solved.
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How much does the "Sinai stamp" or "Sinai visa" cost?
The stamp is absolutely free of charge, but often at Sharm el-Sheikh airport tourists are "bred" to buy or fill out an immigration card for $ 2. But you can fill out this card yourself in a couple of minutes, and not pay anyone anything. There are blank cards at the counters in front of passport control and at the passport control windows (you can go there without a queue and ask for a blank), but be sure to take a pen with you, there are none here.
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How long does the Sinai stamp last?
On different sites you can find conflicting information about the validity of the Sinai stamp. Somewhere 14 days are indicated, in other sources 15 days. We do not know where this contradiction came from, and we have not found any official primary sources. But practice shows that there are definitely no problems with the Sinai stamp when leaving on the 15th day after arrival. It counts, so:
For example, you arrived on the 10th. Add another 15 days to this date, taking into account the date of arrival itself, you will get the 24th. So you have to leave / fly out of Egypt no later than the 24th, and on the 25th there will already be a violation.
Attention! The dates that are stamped in the passport are indicated not by the modern figures we are used to, but by the old Arabic or Indo-Arabic numerals. Learn more about numbers in Egypt and how to count them here.
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How to extend the Sinai stamp in Egypt?
If you suddenly changed your plans and needed to stay more than 15 days, then there are two ways to do this:
- Get a visa on arrival in Egypt. This visa is a stamp that is pasted into the passport and stamped with arrival dates on top (Read more all about the visa to Egypt here). It is easy to get it by contacting guides or local travel agencies, they will do everything for $ 30-50. Or you can get to Sharm el-Sheikh airport yourself, contact the staff there, and they will paste a visa for you at the state price for $ 30 + you can tip them a couple of dollars for help. The period of stay on this visa is 30 days, but the validity period of the stamp is extended not from the date of purchase of the visa, but from the date of entry into the country, which was originally stamped in the free Sinai stamp upon arrival.
- Another option is the so–called "vizaran", i.e. departure from the country and immediately return to get a new stamp or visa. With regard to Sinai, you will either have to fly an international flight from Sharm el-Sheikh airport to another country, or travel by land to Israel through the Taba land crossing. But in any case, this method will be more expensive than the previous one.