Tajikistan's European embassies

The visa situation seems to have become vague again in 2011, after some attempt at simplification in 2010. Robert Middleton tries his best to keep track of the changes on this page: http://www.pamirs.org/visas.htm

Of course, you can also get a visa at the airport if you fly to Dushanbe.

You don't need OVIR registration if you have a 'tourist' visa and if your stay is under 30 days. Stantours can help with the LOI (http://www.stantours.com/ca_mn_vis.html), or look for some other options for LOI support on http://tajiktourism.com/visas/

I'm a Swedish citizen too and I was in Tajikistan about two weeks ago. As I've heard it's not possible to get a visa at the airport without LOI, but I can not confirm this. I got my "tourist" visa at the embassy in Brussels. I did not have any LOI but I paid the fee that's stated on the website for tourist visa without LOI, which is 45 euro for one week and I also paid 10 euro for the postage. I just followed the instructions on the website and enclosed a receipt of the payment in my envelope. It took about two weeks until I got my passport back. Normally it doesn't take that long, but I think the whole embassy was on a conference for a week at the time my passport arrived at their post office (no info about it on their website though - I had to call them to see what was up).

You do not need LOI in Berlin for tourist visa. I just got them this week from them. It was also very fast and efficient - I sent it off on Monday, and on Saturday I already had it back. You only need the application (2x), copy of passport first page, confirmation of fee payment (printout from online banking was enough), and envelope with your address. I guess sending it internationally you also need to make the payment for postage into their account. Good luck!

I started this thread 3 weeks ago and now we have got our visas since about a week. I think I should write down our experiences so other can benefit from them.

We ended up using the embassy in Brussels. They needed no LOI, or I should rather say that I had to write it myself in the form of a introduction letter telling when, why and where we were going.
There were no indication of different prices for single and double entry visas and since we wished to apply for a double entry visa I called and asked. The official said it is the same price and that we only needed to write how many entries we needed in the introduction letter.
The visa processing took 2 days and I must say that the embassy was very helpful. Everything was a lot smoother than I had anticipated but that was only the embassy part. When it came to forwarding of our passports within Europe I discovered a lot of bureaucracy...

The enbassy in London wouldn't assist in sending our passports in return. Royal Mail in UK sells postage on line. Just pay, print out and send, but the huge drawback is that the postage bought online needs to be used no later than the day after. A good solution that is not useful in a case like ours. I contacted DHL in Sweden and they could send passports to London but not arrange the return. They told me to call DHL in UK and they couldn't help me unless I had a British credit card.

So to sum up. We didn't encounter any bureaucracy with the tajik embassy in Brussels but we got our fair share of it with DHL and Royal Mail.

Citizens of many European countries can get the visa directly at the airport if they come by a plane. You need only to have a LOI which you can get from a travel agency located in Tajikistan. They will send you LOI to your e-mail and you need to show the copy of it at the consular section of the airport in order to get the visa.