India was always a pain (used to have to get an annual business visa). First of all, fill in a hugely bureaucratic form online. Next, get hold of photos on a format that nobody else seems to use. Then, despite having submitted everything online, print it all out, and take it along to a processing centre in an inconvenient location in a narrow window of hours in the morning. Queue outside (whatever the weather - and this is London) while someone on a desk just inside the doors checks you have all the relevant documentation with you, very slowly. If you don't, you lose your appointment fee and aren't let in. Just inside is a photo machine selling you the oddly shaped photos, but how you get in to use it, it's not clear.

Once in, it's not too bad. You can apply for a 1- or 2-year visa. Applying for a 2-year visa, however, is simply an expensive way of getting a 1-year visa, as that's what you'll be granted, no matter what. The invitation and sponsor letters that you need to get it need to have specific wording in it, which you can find after only about 20 minutes of drilling down into details of the High Commission website. Then you have to persuade both your and your invitor's HR departments to use the specific wording, which can be a challenge, as they often have their own boilerplates that they hesitate to deviate from. So, you get there, and you're asked a few token questions, and that's it.

You then return a few days later to the same location, in a few hours' window in the afternoon. This also involves queuing outside, as it overlaps with the OCI/CIO applications, and there is a sole queue for entry. So you have to have your paperwork checked (your receipt for your passport) along with much more complex paperwork checking. You then get your passport back.

There were other painful ones too. I was informed I had to get a US visa at one point, but then later informed I could still use the VWP, which was a relief, as the form was near impossible. "Please list all the trips you've take abroad in the last 10 years." Really? At that point, I was travelling abroad every week. Seriously, there's no way I could document that. And given some of the countries on the list, it's probably as well I didn't have to. And let's not get into the ambiguous passive voice in some of the questions about mental health history.

Uzbekistan was an interesting one (and interesting to see it mentioned above). I didn't have to get an invitation, as my first night was in a chain hotel, and this seemed to satisfy them that I was being sensible (the rest was actually unplanned, with some of it on overnight trains, so I'm glad they didn't question it). What was 'interesting' was that, when I got to the embassy (the basement of a house in Holland Park, in West London) they told me, after I'd handed over my passport that, oh, by the way it was going to take two weeks to get it back, rather than the two days the documentation promised. Work weren't best pleased - I was due to go to the Netherlands the next week.

The arrivals/departures process was actually the tricky bit. You had to account for every piece of reading material and medication you were carrying with you (and I read a lot, and, at the time, needed quite a lot of medication). It passed a good portion of the flight, documenting this. It did actually count in my favour, as the departure customs agent took a look at the list and appeared to decide it was far to lengthy to actually go into the details of and waved me straight through.

Getting a Pakistan tourist visa was an interesting experience, but not overly difficult. This was in London, again, at the Pakistan High Commission, a lovely old building in Knightsbridge. They didn't (and I suspect still don't) issue many tourist visas, so I was greeted with a great deal of (genuine) curiosity. The process was slightly quirky in that it had to be paid for in cash - but in Pakistani Rupees, which I could only get hold of in the High Commission. So I had to exchange money for Rupees (getting some extra for arrival in the country too - which confused the counter slightly, as they normally just issue enough for the visa cost, they mainly just get couriers). This wasn't straightforward, either, as the exchange counter, as well as the consular counter, both took strict prayer breaks throughout the day - although on subtly different schedules (the prayer times were the same, of course, but the time either side was staggered). This meant I spent quite some time in the High Commission, but it was a friendly place, and there was cardamom tea on offer, so I wasn't entirely put out. It was a lovely, glued-in, hand-written visa, too, provided on the spot.

Easiest was probably Qatar. I just sidled up to the border and got passed a chip & pin machine.