Regular Tourist Visa for India

If you want to travel to India for holidays or for visiting relatives or friends you can apply for a tourist visa. A tourist visa also allows you to take part in yoga courses as long as they do not take longer than six months and do not end with a a professional qualification. The same is valid for short medical treatments, for courses of languages, music, dance, craft, art, cooking or medicine. With a tourist visa you are not allowed to take part in a structured course programme which continues for more than six month and ends with a certificate or diploma. You cannot do any kind of voluntary work for more than one month and you are not allowed to accept any recompense. 

Please consider that it is up to the respective Indian Embassies' discretion to grant you a visa or not. You cannot convert a tourist visa to any other visa category. Nationals from Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan or foreign nationals with Pakistani origin as well as stateless persons have to make sure that there is a period of two months in between their visits to India.

For the visa application you need to fill in the online application form which you will find here: https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/. The application form only can be filled in electronically, not handwritten. If you completed the form, print it out and submit it to the Visa Centre. Please, do not forget to sign it twice – once at the top right just below the passport photo and once again at the bottom right. Additionally you need two passport photographs with a format of 5 x 5 centimeters. Please, pay attention that at the date you submit your passport it is at least valid for another six months and has a minimum of two blank pages. 

If you are not a German national you have to submit an official proof of residence which is valid for more than one year. In case you are not an EU citizen you have to submit a permit of residence. If you stay in Germany for less than one year, you have to fill in and sign an additional form.

Journalists always have to apply for a journalist visa even if travelling for holidays or visiting friends or relatives.

For minors you are in need of the birth certificate, a letter of the parents and a copy of their passports. 

Apart from these details the embassies are authorized to ask for additional documents or a personal conversation at any time.

The fee for a tourist visa is about 105 Euro but varies within the different representations.

For Berlin and München you will find more details here: http://www.ivs-germany.com/TouristVisa.aspx. For Frankfurt and Hamburg have a look here: https://igcsvisa.de/touristenvisum/.  

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Last Update: 24.05.2021

Written by: Antje Stiebitz

Photo Credit: Ananya Singh

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