Travel advice

Practical guidance on visas, entry rules and planning a trip — the parts that decide whether a trip happens, written plainly.

• Visas and entry

  Applying for a Schengen visa from where you live

  Most of the confusion around Schengen visas is not about the paperwork. It is about which country you are supposed to apply to, and how early. Get those two right and the rest is an appointment and a folder of documents.

• Visas and entry

  Turkey entry rules and the e-visa

  Turkey is one of the busiest leisure destinations in the world, and its entry system is genuinely one of the simpler ones — provided you work out which of the three categories you fall into before you book.

• Visas and entry

  Visa-free and visa-on-arrival travel: how it really works

  Lists of visa-free destinations circulate constantly online and in expat groups everywhere, and most of them are useless to most of the people sharing them — because they are written for one passport and read by holders of thirty.

• Visas and entry

  Georgia and Azerbaijan: two very different entry rules

  Tbilisi and Baku are neighbours a short flight apart, they are frequently sold as one trip, and their entry systems have almost nothing in common. Planning them as a pair without knowing that is the usual way a Caucasus itinerary goes wrong.