---
type: Tip
title: Prepare before you land
description: The paperwork is the part of a border you can do something about — visa approved in advance, cash counted, documents printed, and enough slack in the day for the airline to argue about it.
tags: [visas, borders, planning, paperwork]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
---

# Prepare before you land

Harry's border crossings go well or badly for a reason he thinks is boringly
mechanical: what you did before you got there. Nothing about the approach is
clever. It is having the visa approved in advance, the cash counted, the
documents printed on paper, and the address of where you are staying written
down — and then being early, both to the airport and off the plane.

**The part people underestimate is the airline, not the border.** A visa can be
approved and still cost you ninety minutes at check-in while a desk agent
verifies it, because the carrier is liable if it flies you somewhere you cannot
enter. That is time you have to have budgeted, and it happens before any
immigration officer has seen you.

## How Harry applies it

- **Do the visa at home, and know how long it takes.** Pakistan issues no visa
  on arrival at all, so there is no fallback — Harry's took about five days,
  [Mac](/people/mac.md)'s American passport about ten.
- **Get to the airport very early** when you are flying somewhere that needs a
  visa. This is the one he states as a rule, and he states it after nearly
  missing the flight.
- **Have it on paper.** Printed documents and counted cash, so nothing depends
  on a phone, a signal or a card working.
- **Be first off the plane.** The queue is the whole cost of immigration in most
  places, and it forms in the order people leave the aircraft.

The payoff is visible in the contrast: five minutes through immigration in
Maputo, the smoothest he had had in Africa, and a quick friendly entry to
Karachi at 3am — with the only real trouble of either trip happening at a
check-in desk in Amman.

## Demonstrated in

- [Madness in Mozambique's Maputo! 🇲🇿](/videos/3Imq-hamRZM.md) — through
  [Maputo](/places/maputo.md) immigration in five minutes, which he credits
  directly to visa approval online, cash ready, documents printed and being
  first off the plane.
- [UK tourist travels to KARACHI, PAKISTAN 🇵🇰](/videos/ux604oVHgZI.md) — no
  visa on arrival for [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md), both visas applied for
  days ahead, and ninety minutes lost at check-in anyway.