I've just been talking to a Travel Company who is processing my LOI.
I am Australian, and there is no Embassy here, so I had originally planned to use a Visa Agency and get the Visa in London. But this would take a minimum of 1 month, and the problem here is that we leave in 2 months and I still have not received the LOI even though we applied 4 weeks ago.
The problem seems to be that the Uzbek MFA has stopped processing LOIs while preparing for some SCO summit in Tashkent, and they still have not started processing LOIs again.
So the London option is riskier every day that passes.
The other option mentioned is to change the Visa pickup point to the Tashkent Airport. But my concerns with this are that even though we are in Australia, we will arrive in Tashkent on a flight from Moscow, and we will have a week in Russia before going to Uzbekistan. All the information I have read says that if you have time to visit an Embassy on a connecting flight then they won't issue a visa in the airport. But I have been assured that this is usually not enforced, and that the Airlines (flying on Aeroflot from Moscow and arriving at 4:00am in Tashkent) also understand this and will not give problems when checking in without a Visa.
Has anyone had experience with getting a visa in the airport? Should I be concerned, or is this all standard practice?
Thanks
Matt
