Travelling to India During a Pandemic: An Inside Look

September 24, 2021 ctn_admin

By Sonia Borkar

I never thought I would be getting on a plane during the pandemic. I frowned upon friends who chose to travel and I was extremely judgmental about anyone even contemplating vacations or seeing family. One phone call in June 2021 changed all of that.

I got a call from my 76-year-old mom who was got stuck living alone in India during COVID. She was on her way to the hospital in a rickshaw in the monsoon rains by herself, with chest pains. Within hours it was confirmed that she had suffered two heart attacks. The well reputed private hospital in Mumbai was refusing to do life-saving surgery without having a blood relative present and more importantly without having the bill paid up front, no exceptions. They tried to fleece me for $26,000 over the phone but that’s a different story entirely.

In India the pandemic was raging with the new Delta variant and my husband and I were terrified about getting on a plane. India was not letting people in without having to quarantine in a government facility for 14 days unless you were double vaccinated; considering we had to go straight to the ICU that was not an option.

We had three days to apply for an emergency entry Visa for my husband, get our PCR tests done, download a government check-in app for India, register with the Canadian embassy and fly in on a one-way ticket, hoping we could get back home when we needed to.

Preparing to Travel

Our travel agent, Vilija at St. Clair Travel, was a wealth of information and there is no way we would have made it without her.

She worked tirelessly to make sure we were prepared. I have always booked tickets online but with the complexity of all the paperwork and needing to know what rules were changing minute by minute and what forms and apps were required where, there is no way we could have done this on our own.

I have to say the aircraft and the airports felt much safer and calmer than I expected. No entry into the airport unless you’re travelling and everyone travelling needed proof of a negative PCR test and/or proof of vaccination depending on where you were going.

Most (of course not all) people were good at masking up and giving you space and the whole experience was less nerve-racking than anticipated. Even the hotel we stayed at for the first few days required negative tests and vaccination records which again felt reassuring given the climate. It’s was nice to see everyone in the travel industry taking all the precautions they possibly could.

Coming Home

We finally made it into the country and got a quarantine exemption based on vaccination status. Mom had surgery and a week later we started to research options to get us all back home to Toronto.

Who knew everything so far was the easy part? Getting out of the country and back home was a whole different ballgame.

The flight ban for India was extended, the country was preparing for an impending third wave and if we didn’t leave now we could be there till the fall or winter. This was not an option for us, we had jobs and a dog waiting for us at home.

I found a Facebook group called Canadians Stranded in India which is how we navigated getting out of the country in addition to our travel agents at St. Clair & Nu Way Travel in Toronto. I can’t stress enough how helpful the agents were, you can tell they genuinely care for their clients.

At first we were told to wait and see if routes started to open up so we waited about five days but things started going the other way, countries that were allowing passengers from India to transit/layover started to close their doors. We had three realistic options to get home, all of them really long and super expensive, some requiring visas even to transit.

We paid $4,000 each for premium economy one-way tickets. Economy seating wasn’t an available option for another week. The travel agents were so lovely that they secured our tickets and let us e-transfer them money over three days (due to e-transfer limits). Without that, we wouldn’t have been able to purchase our tickets.  

We went with the Mexico City route, getting to North America was our safest bet and closer to home. We went from Mumbai to Frankfurt, had a five-hour layover there, then on to Mexico City where we had to get another PCR test. We stayed in Mexico for a day and a half since Canada was not accepting passengers directly from India without providing a negative test from a third country. So, two and a half days, three countries and a third and final swab up the nose, we were finally home!

I have never been happier to be on Canadian soil.

It was a grueling journey but I’m utterly grateful that we made it with my 76-year-old mom who is now recovering from her heart surgery.

I feel differently about travel restrictions after this experience, I fully support mandatory tests, vaccine passports, taking extra precautions and although it was tough, even the ban on direct flights from India, but there does need to be more government support for Canadian citizens trying to return home.

After living in a pandemic for a year and a half, we forget that travel isn’t just for vacations and family celebrations, sometimes it’s life and death.

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