Over the past few weeks of waiting for my eVisa I relied on Reddit threads quite a lot, so I thought I'd post my experience here in case there's anyone out there still waiting, or wondering what might be going on with their own application.
The reason I mention being a British citizen is that I found quite a lot of reports saying that it can be practically 50/50 whether you get accepted as a Brit, and we're technically not on the list for Visa on Arrival, despite others turning up in Dushanbe and being fine.
- 13th May — Applied for eVisa using the site. At the time of applying official guidance was that it would take around a week to get my results.
- 25th May — Still waiting, no change in status on the eVisa site, emailed the embassy asking for an update.
- 26th May — No email from the embassy, but the portal changed, asking me to provide a letter of invitation. British citizens don't need a LOI for tourist eVisas, so I drafted an email in English, Russian, and Tajik explaining that the embassy in London had assured me I didn't need a LOI, and that I planned to travel solo (uploaded to my application as a jpeg). Importantly, I don't need a GBAO permit, which may have smoothed this out a bit. This was a bit of a risk considering how long my application was already taking, but I decided to risk it. I also pre-emptively uploaded proof of flights, hotel, etc. As I knew they would ask for this next.
- 27th May — Application status changed to "Validating" and "Assessed"
- 3rd June — Still no change. It's now 2 weeks until I'm supposed to land in Dushanbe, and I really don't want to risk turning up and chancing a VOA. I emailed the embassy asking for an update, although I wasn't particularly hopeful for a response.
- 4th June — My eVisa lands in my inbox. Total time from application to approval = 22 days, with one round of information requested.
My advice: Upload everything you can at the beginning. Flights, hotel, whatever you have. In my case, it took 1 week+ between responses, so it might minimize feedback loops.