Permission to visit a country is given in the form of a visa, and usually visas are a necessary part of your travel overseas. In order to get a visa, your passport must be examined by the officials of the country you are planning on visiting, and a stamp or sticker is placed in your passport specifying the time period that you are allowed to be in that country. If you are visiting several countries, you might need several visas.

To get a visa for China or India, you first need to fill out an application. Here are links to Acrobat (.pdf) files that contain either the Chinese Visa Application or the Indian Visa Application.

For both visas, apply to be a tourist (not "in transit" or anything else). That's a single-entry "L" visa for China. The Chinese visa also asks On the Indian visa there is a question (#36) asking for the names of people you know in India. For this, fill in the words "David Less Tours." After completion, send the application, along with a bank (not personal) check for the proper amount of money (in U.S. dollars), one or two passport photographs (depending on the country), and your valid passport to the appropriate Indian or Chinese consulate in San Francisco, at the address given below.

Your passport is valuable! Be sure to send your application by some way that it can be tracked, and delivery can be confirmed.

Consulate of the People's Republic of China
1450 Laguna Street
San Francisco CA 94115
Tel: (415) 415-674-2940
http://www.chinaconsulatesf.org/eng

Consulate General of India
540 Arguello Boulevard
San Francisco, CA 94118
Tel: (415) 668-0662
Fax: (415) 668-9764
http://www.indianconsulate-sf.org