Entry paperwork for Kenya and Tanzania

01

Kenya: the eTA in practice

Kenya's electronic travel authorisation is applied for online before departure through the official government portal, per traveller including children, under the current rules for your nationality. The sensible rhythm is to apply once flights are ticketed and comfortably ahead of travel: processing is usually quick, but 'usually' is not a word to test at a check-in desk.

The practical notes that save files: names must match passports exactly, the same discipline this journal preaches for permits; transit routings through Nairobi have their own current provisions worth confirming; and approval documents travel best printed and offline-saved both. Sail files include the application guidance and a completion check per traveller, because one missing eTA grounds one seat and unravels one whole party's arrival day.

Two Kenya-specific wrinkles earn their sentence. Cross-border overland routings, the classic Mara-to-Serengeti shapes our multi-country files run, mean your authorisation must match how you actually enter, not just where you land first, so the requirements sheet is built from the final routing rather than the flight booking. And families should note that applications draw on each child's own passport details and photographs; the ten minutes per child is trivial in an armchair and expensive in a departure hall.

02

Tanzania and Zanzibar: visa plus additions

Mainland Tanzania issues visas through its official e-visa portal in advance, or under current arrival provisions that vary by nationality; the advance route is Sail's default recommendation because it moves the queue from an airport counter to your desk at home. Multiple-entry and transit categories exist under current rules for routings that leave and re-enter, a shape our two-country files sometimes take.

Zanzibar adds its own layer despite being part of Tanzania: current arrival requirements include the archipelago's mandatory inbound travel insurance scheme purchased under its current rules before or on arrival, alongside the mainland visa. The addition is small, administrative and famous for surprising travellers at the boarding gate for the short hop; on Sail files it is handled with the visa paperwork weeks earlier, one line among many, invisible by design.

03

The EATV boundary, restated for the savannah

The East African Tourist Visa is this journal's oldest paperwork lesson, and it bears exact restating for savannah files: it covers Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda on one instrument, and it has never covered Tanzania. A Kenya-Tanzania journey therefore always carries two instruments: Kenya's eTA and Tanzania's visa, however the trade blogs round it off.

Where the EATV earns its place on a savannah file is the triangle shape: Kenya's plains joined to Uganda's or Rwanda's forests. Then one EATV covers the two member countries and Tanzania, if present, still brings its own visa. Joseph's desk keeps a one-page matrix of which instruments serve which routings; the version for your exact journey arrives with the first design.

Transit deserves its own line because it catches careful people. Changing planes in Nairobi en route to Kilimanjaro, or the reverse, raises the question of whether your routing needs Kenya's authorisation at all under current transit provisions, and the answer depends on terminals, airlines and whether bags recheck. The requirements sheet resolves it from the actual tickets rather than the general rule, which is the only way transit questions are ever safely answered.

04

The constants, and how Sail runs the layer

Beneath the country specifics sit the constants no nationality escapes: passports valid at least six months beyond travel with spare blank pages; children's documents complete, including any consent paperwork your home country's rules require for minors travelling with one parent; and yellow fever certification where your routing touches an endemic country under current international health rules, a question our health-layer coverage handles in full.

Operationally the layer runs on one artefact: the per-traveller requirements sheet issued at booking, naming each document, portal, fee and honest lead time for the actual passports on the file, then checked to completion three weeks out. Rules are confirmed against the official sources below at booking and again near travel, because governments adjust entry systems without consulting safari calendars, and the difference between a rule change absorbed and a rule change suffered is simply who was watching.

A final word on portals, because it protects money as well as time: apply only through the official government addresses linked below. The search results around visa applications are crowded with third-party sites that charge multiples of the official fee for the privilege of retyping your form, and some are worse than expensive. The official portals are the ones Sail's requirements sheet names, letter for letter; when in doubt, use the sheet's link and not the search bar.