If you plan to visit the exotic country of Sri Lanka or make a stopover there, you should know that it is necessary to obtain a visa to travel, whether for business, tourism or transit. You will also need to meet the conditions for the use of the passport, and have a return plane ticket and sufficient financial resources to stay in the country for the chosen time. Additionally, you may be worried about the carbon footprint that your plane trip will have. Therefore, below, we explain how to get a visa to travel to Sri Lanka and offset CO2 in the same procedure.
How to get a visa to travel to Sri Lanka
If you need a visa to travel or stopover in Sri Lanka, you have the option of get it online in a very simple way, in a shorter period of time and for a lower amount than the paper visa. In reality, it is not exactly a visa, but a Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA). Below, we explain the steps you have to take to obtain it.
1. Apply for the visa in advance
Don’t leave it until the last minute, you have to process the application in time sufficient to avoid an unexpected delay in the event of incidents such as technical failures, holidays or periods with a higher volume of requests. You do not need to have the purchased plane ticket, but you do valid passport. Apply for the visa as soon as you know you are going to travel to Sri Lanka.
2. Fill out the application form
This procedure to obtain a digital visa can be easily carried out online, and at any time of the day, for those travelers who are not going to spend more than 30 days in Sri Lanka. This way, you will not have to travel to the consulate. You just have to fill out the form with the data requested and indicating the type of visa you want (business, tourism or transit). It doesn’t take more than a few minutes. It can be done for a single person or for an entire group traveling at the same time. Remember that minors also need this visa. Specifically, the information they will ask you for is name, sex, date of birth, nationality, passport number and its grant and expiration date. You will also need an approximate date of arrival in Sri Lanka, address, profession, COVID-19 vaccination status and whether you already have any other visas.
3. Pay for the visa issuance
It can also be done online by card or PayPal and has a cost of 69.95 euros for direct payment in this currency, which covers the amount of consular fees, the administrative fees involved in managing the service, as well as the VAT of the application. Transaction costs then, there will be no. If the processing is urgent, it carries an additional fee of 17.50 euros per person.
4. Receive the visa
All we have to do is wait for it to arrive. your Sri Lanka visa by email. If you choose the urgent request, you can generally receive it in about 20 minutes, counting from making the payment. Normal processing can take, on average, about 3 days. The online visa for Sri Lanka has 6 months validity. Although it would not be necessary to show it in a printed version, since it is associated with the passport, when traveling it is advisable to carry a couple of printed copies in case there is an error or difficulty.
How to offset the CO2 of your trip to Sri Lanka to take care of the environment
Carbon dioxide is a gas designated as main responsible for global warmingparticipating in atmospheric pollution and the greenhouse effect, which is why it is essential to control its emissions. Precisely, airplane engines emit tons of this gas by burning kerosene, so the best option would be not to travel by plane, among other measures, such as not using the car or not eating meat.
As an intermediate option is the compensation of what is known as the carbon footprint. This can be done, for example, by investing in projects that contribute to reducing the presence of this gas in the atmosphere, which can be achieved by reducing its emissions or absorbing a greater amount of CO2 from the air.
In the online visa processing that we have just explained It is possible to offset the carbon footprint produced by air travel round trip to Sri Lanka. And you can do it with just one click and so that there are no harmful side effects of compensation, neither socially nor ecologically. Specifically, this must be indicated before making the payment, since the compensation implies pay a surcharge allocated entirely to certified projects that reduce CO2 emissions. This certification depends on organizations that inspect each project, ensuring that they comply with regulations and the amount of CO2 they offset, which they can sell in the form of CO2 credits. The amount allocated to CO2 compensation is not a fixed amount, as it depends on the country of departure and takes into account the CO2 emissions of the direct flight to and from Sri Lanka. These projects are, for example, reforestation with trees that will convert CO2 into oxygen, ways to use renewable energy sources such as solar panels, more energy efficient installations, etc.
If you want to read more articles similar to Traveling to Sri Lanka: how to get a visa and offset the CO2 of your tripwe recommend that you enter our Tourism category.
