All of a sudden my wife decided to visit her parents in Bangladesh. She would take our little one with her. This is his first visit to Bangladesh, so his passport needs Bangladeshi visa. Fortunately, Bangladesh government provides “No Visa Required” (NVR) stamp on the passport for $50 which is valid till the passport expires. Thus, I needed to get NVR on his passport.

We used to go to Bangladesh consulate in NY when it was in Manhattan (now it is in Queens). I called the consulate to find out if I can go there with my passport because in their website (http://bdcgny.org/) one of the conditions to get NVR from them was “The applicant must have stay permit/work permit etc. of  the Consulate’s jurisdiction”. I was told I would have to go to Bangladesh Embassy in Washington DC since I live in Pennsylvania. I asked what if I just go there would they do it for me since I used to go to Bangladesh consulate in NY. In response the woman just hang up on me; civility is rare in Bangladesh consulate. I decided to go to Bangladesh Embassy.

I would have to take a day off of my work and I would drive at least 145 miles to the Embassy so I wanted to be able to get the NVR in the same day. I found two different forms in Bangladesh embassy website (http://www.bdembassyusa.org/). Also, they wanted a passport photo of the applicant with a white background. First, I filled out the application online and printed it. Then printed the same pdf form and filled out by hand and finally printed the second form (most likely old but still found online) and filled it too. I had three different version of the application at the end. I knew how picky Bangladeshi officials were when I was in Bangladesh, so I didn’t want to be rejected for any mistake in the application. We had the passport pictures that we used to get our US passport but the background weren’t exactly white and US authorities didn’t mind at all. Since I needed NVR from Bangladeshi authorities I tried to follow their rules; took pictures twice and printed passport pictures twice because the first one didn’t have white background.

I started my journey at 7:00am on Thursday 09 March 2017 to go to Bangladesh Embassy and drove 146 miles to get there. It took me little more than 3 hours because I drove past three big cities (Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore) during morning rush hours. After getting there I drove past Bangladesh embassy because couldn’t find any parking in the embassy row. After driving another 8/10 minutes I asked a police officer of US Secret Service that this was my first time there and was there a parking garage that I can park in. He directed me to a metered parking place. Parked there ($2.30/hour) and went to the embassy.

I expected a big crowd but there were only two other people in the consular section. Later I learned that 95% of their work is done by mail, so people don’t really go to the embassy. I thought about mailing our passport too but I was worried of losing mail and not many days left before they travel to Bangladesh, so didn’t take the risk. Within 15 minutes I was done submitting my applications. I asked if It was possible to get the passport back before 3:30pm since I had nothing to do for this long time. The officer told me no and also informed me in near future it would take 4 days to issue NVR because they would start a new system and instead of stamp they would print sticker for the passport.   

It was hard to kill time doing nothing. Talked to wife, mother and brother-in-law and fed the meter $4 for the second time and went to eat lunch. Walked in to a Subway for a sandwich near the University of District of Columbia (www.udc.edu) and at the register I realized DC has 10% sales tax (ours is 8%). I texted to a close friend who lives in Virginia and works in Washington DC, so he called back. He was far from where I was and working, so I didn’t want to bother him even though he was insisting me to meet him in his office. Besides, parking is a big problem in DC. Walked back to my car through a different road that I took to go to Subway and found out that less than a block away street parking was free. Also, found a narrow park (in the picture) behind the embassy of Austria and sat there for few minutes alone. I moved my car to a free parking spot and tried to sleep but couldn’t. I took my Samsung tab with me anticipating this problem of killing time but there was no free wifi, so couldn’t watch any movie. Watched an episode of comedy series “Cheers” using my data in my phone instead. Moved my car to another street because parking was allowed up to two hours only.

Started walking again at 3:00pm to kill the final 30 minutes. Pakistan has a bigger embassy building than Bangladesh. UAE has a shiny good looking building. Israeli embassy doesn’t have its name written on the gate; I guess their flag is good enough to identify them or may be they don’t want to be identified so easily. The street was very quiet and I was the only person walking on the street. Walked past Bangladesh embassy because I only walked 10 minutes. Embassy of Morocco is under construction which is close to Bangladesh Embassy. Didn’t know Jordan is a Hashemite Kingdom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan) before reading it on their embassy building. Around 3:20pm, I walked into the Bangladesh Embassy and after waiting another 10 minutes I got my passport back with no visa required stamp. Believe it or not I got almost the same feeling that I got after getting US immigration visa in 1997 which was very hard to get from Bangladesh and coveted by most of the people in Bangladesh. The reason behind that was I didn’t want to drive another 300 miles another day to get this work done. Around 4:00pm I started driving and reached home around 7:15pm. Again I had to drive during afternoon rush hours; people were going home from work.