My travel buddies and I are headed to West Africa in May.. investigating getting some visas beforehand (Ghana/Mali/?) but the others at the borders. I've never had to send off for multiple visas at a time, usually we just FedEx the passports to the embassy with a prepaid return FedEx envelope inside. Is it possible to just address the 1st return envelope to the 2nd embassy (with a 2nd return envelope to home address inside)?

Eg. Instead of FedEx -> embassy A -> home -> embassy B -> home, do home -> A -> B -> home

saves a FedEx trip at least.

I know visa services can do this, but usually they want $40-$50 per visa per person..

I just use a visa service. The hassle and time they save (processing by embassies is sometimes much quicker using the service due to the way they are prioritised) is worthwhile to me.

The visa service I use regularly applies discounts for multiple visas in one go.

Hmm. haven't found any here in the US that offer discounts. Not worth the extra $100+ per passport ($300 altogether) to use a service for two visas. For that price I could fly to DC and hand-deliver them.

Do you check, double check and triple check everything that is in the envelope when you send off a visa application? I know I do. One missing photo and the whole thing could be rejected.

So, the question is whether you would trust someone in Embassy A to make sure all the stuff is together in the right envelope to send off to Embassy B. Bear in mind that the clerk in Embassy A might be very well intentioned but might be working in a second language; is almost certainly unfamiliar with the requirements of Embassy B; and even if he or she did double and triple check, there is still plenty of room for error or misunderstanding.

Personally, I�d do two separate transactions or use a visa service.

I agree. You only need two visas, just send off for one, then send off for the other one.

My concern would be if your passport got lost between embassy A and B - I think you'd be hosed. Whereas if it got lost between you and one of the embassies then you are in a much better position to sort it out.

If you do insist in trying to do it in one, then I would just pay a visa service. $40 - $50 seem reasonable to be, certainly compared with the hassle in losing a passport.

I also agreed with the other posters- do the visas one at a time. There's too much risk in something happening to the passport between A and B otherwise.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure that an embassy or consulate would always agree to forward a passport on to another embassy or consulate (they might, but I don't think that they all would). And as Mr H said, would you trust someone working at an embassy or consulate to send on all the right stuff and not to have thrown it out when the application arrived as being irrelevant ("Oh, I see he's sent his application for Ruritania as well as our application: he's obviously made a mistake, so we don't need to keep all that paperwork..."). There's also the risk that the passport would never be sent anywhere, being consigned rather to the "too-hard basket" by some jobsworth or scared junior employee.

Personally, I'd either send the passport in separately for each application (especially given that there are only two of them) or else retain the services of a reliable visa agency �.who will charge, yes, but weighed against the cost of the whole trip it might not be so much.

In this circumstance I think the visa service is cheap insurance. Consulates the world over are good at losing things. Visa services take the responsibility and often are quicker also. It only seems expensive until you live through a problem.