How long is the flight, really
Direct flights from Dubai to Delhi run roughly 3 hours 25 minutes to 3 hours 50 minutes depending on the airline, with more than 100 flights a week across Emirates, flydubai, Air India, IndiGo, and SpiceJet. From Abu Dhabi, direct flights run roughly 3 hours 35 minutes to 4 hours 5 minutes, with around four non-stop departures daily via Etihad, Air India Express, and IndiGo. For a family travelling with a child who finds long journeys difficult, this is genuinely one of the shorter international therapy-trip routes available, short enough to manage without an overnight flight or a long layover.
What visa you actually need
A tourist visa cannot be used for therapy, India requires a medical visa (M-visa) for the child as the patient and a medical attendant visa (MX-visa) for an accompanying parent. Both require a Visa Invitation Letter (VIL), a digital pre-verification issued before the e-visa application can even be submitted, so this needs to be arranged through your clinic or facilitator before the visa process starts, not after. Your child needs their own passport, a minor consent form, and a birth certificate as supporting documents. Applications can go in 4 to 120 days ahead of travel, and most process within about 72 hours, though a week of buffer is worth building in.
Why UAE families end up considering this trip
Private therapy in the UAE typically runs AED 250-600 per session, and many insurance plans pool speech therapy and OT against a single shared annual limit, so a child needing both disciplines exhausts cover faster than expected. A concentrated 2-week therapy block in Delhi NCR, covering daily multidisciplinary sessions, runs around USD 4,800-6,800, often working out to less than the UAE cost of the same volume of sessions once annual insurance limits are factored in, even after adding flights and accommodation.
Planning around the climate
Delhi NCR's cooler months, roughly October to March, are the most comfortable time to travel, particularly relevant if your child has heat sensitivity. The pre-monsoon and monsoon period, April through September, brings higher heat and humidity, worth factoring in if your travel dates are flexible.
What to arrange before you fly
Beyond the visa, confirm your accommodation's proximity to the clinic, shorter daily commutes matter more than they might seem to on paper, especially with a child who finds transitions difficult. Gather your child's existing assessments and therapy records to share with the clinic in advance, so sessions start productively rather than repeating groundwork. And if your child benefits from knowing what to expect, prepare them for the flight and the new environment in the days before travel, a visual schedule or simple walkthrough of what's coming helps many children settle faster on arrival.
What a typical week looks like once you land
Most programmes build in a settling-in period on the first day or two rather than expecting full participation immediately, jet lag and a new environment take some adjustment. From there, a 2-week block typically means daily sessions across the disciplines your child's programme covers, with a parent review built in partway through and a written summary and home carryover plan by the end.
Getting home, and what continues afterward
The trip's value depends heavily on what happens after you're back in the UAE. A well-run programme sends you home with documentation you can share with your child's regular UAE-based therapists or paediatrician, so the carryover work started in Delhi NCR continues rather than stopping the moment the flight lands.
