For more than 5 years, popular travel blogger Nomadic Matt has traveled the world almost nonstop. Unfortunately, passport mishaps can happen to anyone, even the most seasoned travel veterans. Earlier this month, disaster struck Nomadic Matt in the form of a lost passport.
Within minutes of exiting a plane, he realized he’d left his passport behind. Unfortunately, a few minutes was all it took for the lost passport to vanish forever. Matt calls this “the worst thing that has happened to me while traveling,” which is kind of surprising when you consider that his travel career has included hospital stays, getting ripped off numerous times and even getting lost in a Costa Rican jungle.
Here’s why:
“It was gone. And along with it, 9 years of stamps. I had added pages to the passport twice as I accumulated those stamps. Now they are gone….and I’m still devastated.”
Travel experts always recommend that you make a copy of the identification pages of your passport to make it easier to get a replacement if it does get lost or stolen while you’re traveling. However, especially if you travel frequently, the stamps in the back are probably worth copying as well. Passport stamps give you bragging rights, create a record of your travels and trigger memories of the places you’ve visited. To avoid losing all of that if you lose your passport, consider snapping a picture of each page of stamps and either saving them to on your computer or uploading them to a secure cloud service like Evernote.
Losing 9 years’ worth of stamps wasn’t the only problem the lost passport caused, however. While Nomadic Matt was able to get an emergency passport at the US Embassy, it was only a limited validity passport good for one year. And while technically that shouldn’t be a problem for at least 6 months (many countries require that your passport be valid for 6 months past the date of entry), apparently it is a problem if you’re trying to fly into London’s Heathrow Airport, which he would have needed to do to attend a friend’s wedding in the US without messing up his other travel plans. As Matt explained on his blog:
Everyone, including the embassy, recommended that I avoid trying to re-enter the UK on a temporary passport. Going out would be easy. Coming back, I might face problems. My gut agreed. And with no real idea (everyone has a different story!) about how long getting a new 10-year passport could take while in NYC, I couldn’t risk it. The passport office in New York City requires appointments and make no guarantee of a same-day turn around.
So, he also missed his friend’s wedding.
At RushMyPassport, we can get your lost passport replacement issued generally within 24 hours of receiving your paperwork. To get it processed that quickly, we hand-deliver your paperwork to the Department of State, so you don’t have to worry about making an appointment or waiting in line at a passport agency.
Given that he was only in the US for the weekend, when the Department of State’s passport offices are closed, we wouldn’t have been able to help Nomadic Matt attend his friend’s wedding, either. However, if you need to replace a lost passport or a limited validity passport in a hurry, we do offer 24-hour processing without the hassle of a passport agency.
Replace your lost passport quickly and easily today!