Coronavirus: Travelling During a Pandemic
It’s especially strange if you find yourself in another country, where you clearly stand out as a foreigner and the nation you are in has just suspended all foreign visas
By Shri & Firuza
Intro
We were initially planning for our first India blog to be on our Delhi experience but with everything that’s going on at the moment, we figured you’d find it more useful and more interesting if we focused this one on the experience of travelling abroad during the coronavirus (CV) pandemic. We’re not aiming to make light of the situation, we just want to share our experience and possibly provide some entertainment to those of you stuck at home in self-isolation and getting bored of Netflix.
So, where to begin? The world seems like it’s gone a bit mad lately! From lockdowns in various Cities and Countries across the globe, to western nations having toilet paper crises that seem downright bizarre to everyone in the east, and market prices crashing all around us, it is definitely a strange time to be around. Advice as to how to combat the virus is plentiful in the media and social media, from washing your hands regularly to eating more garlic, and more recently to drinking cow urine (seriously this was on the BBC)!
It’s especially strange if you find yourself in another country, where you clearly stand out as a foreigner and the nation you are in has just suspended all foreign visas. And so let’s talk about India and how this situation has progressed since we came here.
The beginning
When we first arrived in Delhi back in January, the term ‘Coronavirus’ was a non-existent term in our vocabulary. We were here to explore the wondrous landscapes and architecture India has to offer, to see our 7th wonder of the world, to spend some time with Shri’s family, many of who are from India and very importantly to have fun! We’re glad to say we did all of the above before the situation escalated as it has in the past week but within the two months that we’ve been here things have changed significantly.
Rewind to January and February and the local people couldn’t get enough of us. Everyone wanted to be in a selfies with the foreigners and we’d sometimes end up staying longer in attractions purely because people would be taking multiple selfies of us and then their friend would be doing the same. Some people wouldn’t even ask for a selfies, they’d simply just take the picture of us and then walk off – happy with their new acquisition, which they’d later show their friends and family. Fast-forward to the last week (early-March 2020) and people will move out of the way when they see you and those who have a mask or scarf will immediately put it back on once they catch a sight of you. The selfie days sadly, are gone now.
We took lot of selfies with locals before CV became associated with foreigners.
February – still not a threat right?
By February we’d been in various states, travelling on various modes of transport in India (at this point there were very few billboard signs related to CV but there were still a fair few!), including every different class on national railway, which we highly recommend to anyone who plans to visit India when international travel resumes. Between our busy schedules we would occasionally check the news and hear a few bits about the virus, which was still mainly isolated to China with only a few cases in other parts of the world. At this point, we didn’t offer much thought to the outbreak other than marvelling at China’s apparent ability to build a hospital within the space of a week. We also noted a slump in the share price of Corona (the beverage) – surely that can’t be linked to a virus that shares a similar name?
Coronavirus poster in Jaisalmer in February 2020
But during mid-February while in the city of Udaipur (city of lakes – an absolute must visit and a popular wedding destination for India) we had our first proper conversation with a local about the virus. She was a restaurant owner and she was telling us how her husband had told her not to let Chinese tourists into the shop for fear of catching the virus. To us this seemed quite an extreme measure – was this the beginning of country profiling and discrimination? She had told us that she would do no such thing, which we were happy to hear, but then when we thought about it a little more we did wonder how would the spread be stopped. As a final comment, she mentioned to us the name of a hotel that had had a guest who tested positive for CV: it just so happened to be our hotel!
She assured us that the guest had left a week or so ago and that all staff had been tested and were negative for the virus. The odd thing though, is that to that date, there was no news about this anywhere. The only reported cases were the 3 in the state of Kerala, which we were nowhere near. Was this information being kept? Or was there no truth to what she was telling us and was this just fun gossip for her? Who knows! While we pondered for a little while the thoughts soon disappeared from our minds.
The beautiful lakes of Udaipur.
Getting sick during an outbreak!
When you get ill during the midst of what was at that point, at least an epidemic, you can’t help but wonder: have I caught CV? Towards the end of our time in Udaipur and the beginning of our stay in Jaipur, Shri was sick multiple times with symptoms of vomiting and fever. These were inconsistent with CV but we decided to get him checked by a doctor once we reached Jaipur. Funnily enough the doctor had the same first name as Shri (Shirish) and was a jovial character. He assured us that Shri would make a recovery, that this was just a bug (not CV) and advised on eating bananas and curd for a few days and avoiding spicy food to settle the stomach. Within a day, he was feeling much better and Firuza was feeling extremely smug as she proceeded to tell Shri that her immune system was better than his.
And so on we continued…
Tension grows
By the end of February and early March we found ourselves in the centre of India in the state of Maharashtra, which is where Shri’s family comes from. From Nagpur, which is the city right at the heart of India, you have a range of different forests with tiger reserves within good proximity and we ended up visiting Pench National Park for several days upon arrival. While this part of the trip had nothing to do with CV, we just wanted to sneak this picture below into the blog!
We’ll share more info on our visit to Pench when we start releasing the proper India blogs!
After Pench National Park, having spent just under a week with family in Yavatmal, we were making our way to Mumbai via Nagpur in early March. The situation abroad had got worse during our time here with Italy now becoming severely affected by CV. India was also reporting more cases now and our family were giving us lots of advice regarding the outbreak. We had a great time in Yavatmal and in some ways, being with lots of family everyday stops you from checking your phone for news every other minute and so sheltered us to some extent form what was happening outside.
Nagpur is not known as a tourist destination, and you won’t often find many in this part of the country. However, despite this, dozens of people on the plane from Nagpur to Mumbai were wearing masks as a precautionary measure. When people are wearing masks in Nagpur, you know shit has got real!
Foreigner Profiling Begins
We visited more family after this in Nashik before spending one night in Aurangabad as we visited the Ajanta and Ellora caves (well worth a visit – truly stunning architecture and rock carving!). When checking into the hotel, we asked if they had any rooms available as we had seen online that there were vacancies and they said yes and began taking our passports and checking us in. The hotel in question was called Hotel Ginger and was a nice place to crash after a long day travelling between Nashik, Ajanta and Aurangabad.
But once the staff saw our British passports, they were suddenly on the phone with someone else and within a few minutes they told us that all the rooms are now booked. This seemed peculiar, as they had just told us they had rooms and availability was also still showing online. But they were adamant that the last available rooms had been booked online as we had been speaking and that it would take some time to show up on the system. We sincerely hoped that they were telling the truth and not lying about this. If a policy had come in to stop foreigners from entering to protect against further potential spread then they should be upfront with us and not turn us away by lying about capacity.
We ended up going to a neighbouring hotel, not sure whether there was truth in what they had said about being fully booked all of a sudden on a weeknight, or if us being foreign had put them off in light of the CV outbreak. We would find out our answer to this when we returned to Mumbai.
The Ajanta Caves are a ‘must visit’ once the pandemic calms down
March Madness
By Friday the 13th March 2020 everything was unfolding rapidly. The virus had now been declared as a pandemic by the WHO, cases were rising rapidly in Europe, as were deaths, international travel was being cancelled and entry blocked to foreigners across many nations while India decided to suspend all foreign visas for people entering the country.
For Shri it really hit home when the Premier League got postponed. The Premier League doesn’t get postponed! He was probably more annoyed about the game between Manchester United and Tottenham not going ahead on the Sunday as United were almost certainly going to win that with all of Tottenham’s injuries. Either way, when it does resume eventually, United will still win that game!
As for us we were back in Nashik with family and spent the morning playing with colours as is tradition following the Holi festival. But on the streets people weren’t playing – people were staying inside taking cover from the spreading virus. We also visited a cinema to watch Baaghi 3 (Hindi Movie) 2 days before all movie theatres were shut down. The cinema was eerily empty and we had to go through a security check and sanitize our hands as we entered the premises.
Playing colours after Holi – don’t wear your best clothes!
Hotel Mumbai
When we arrived in Mumbai, we checked in again at the same chain Hotel Ginger. Our fears from Aurangabad were confirmed here. Upon handing over our passports we were told we couldn’t check in here and shown government legislation pertaining to the visa suspension in India to foreign nationals. We explained that we’d been in the country for around 2 months and had not just entered. We also stressed that we were not exhibiting any symptoms consistent with CV.
In the end after a chat with Shri’s Uncle, they decided to let us stay on condition we provide a medical certificate, which we did the next day (which just confirmed that we were asymptomatic). Had it not been for Shri’s Uncle however, we may have found ourselves in a more difficult situation. Indeed for the foreign traveller who had just entered the country, one would not have somewhere to stay for the night as more places were becoming vigilant and the city was preparing for a partial lockdown. Luckily Shri had more family in Mumbai albeit further out of the city so we always had some options in case no hotels accepted us.
Hotel’s thermometer to scan for temperatures before entry
Mumbai: The Ghost City
Mumbai is India’s most populated city and we had been looking forward to experiencing some hustle and bustle in one of the world’s busiest urban locations. But it was quiet; not empty, far from it. People were about, but this did not seem anywhere near as busy as Delhi had been back in January or even the smaller Rajasthan cities of Jodhpur or Bikaner in February.
Mumbai was in partial lockdown with public places such as shopping centres, malls and movie theatres and schools all closed until the end March 2020. The same was the case for the city of Pune, which was badly hit by CV. The state of Kerala where we were supposed to be going had also shut down and was probably going to have to be omitted from our trip.
Saying that, we still managed to visit Elephanta Island off the coast of Mumbai, which was open, the Gateway of India, view some of the colonial architecture around the city, meet a friend and meet some family. Not bad for a trip during a lockdown! The highways and streets were lined with billboards dedicated to combating CV – India is taking the tackling of this pandemic very seriously! Sometimes there were up to 3 or 4 CV posters in a row on the matter!
Gateway of India much less crowded than usual
Along with the reduced number of people out on the streets, we also noted that all the Uber drivers were wearing masks (and asking us where we came from – no doubt worried that we might be Italians), people kept their distance from one another and hotels (including ours) started doing temperature checks as we entered the premises to make sure we didn’t have a fever. While walking through a market, one man started shouting ‘Corona, Corona’ as we walked past. Maybe he was just saying what was on his mind, maybe he wanted a Corona beer, but we are convinced he was saying it because two foreigners were in the area and people have come to associate the virus with foreigners (whatever country you are in).
India going all out with the CV related billboards
Self-Isolating in Goa
We managed to take a train from Mumbai direct to Goa the day before the interstate trains started getting cancelled. At this point (mid-March 2020), Maharashtra is one of the worst affected states in both number of cases and deaths. People who were originally sitting near us moved away from us once we sat down to keep their distance even though they were all wearing masks. Also, while we were disembarking from the train, a woman who was boarding suddenly noticed Firuza as she entered the carriage, did a double take and came back in a few seconds later with her scarf around her face like a mask. The pre-conception of foreigners being virus carriers is now everywhere and wherever you are in the world, it’s unlikely you will be able to escape from this until sometime after this all blows over.
In Goa itself where we are now, beaches are almost deserted and restaurants and shops are virtually empty but for a few. Luckily we are staying at a friend’s house here and so avoided the hotel drama that we had in Aurangabad and Mumbai (we won’t be going back to Hotel Ginger in the future after those two episodes).
And so now begins the end of what was supposed to be a 3-month trip after only 2 months. We’re beginning to look at options for travelling back to the UK before travel becomes even harder than it already is. At the same time, our thoughts are going back and forth over whether it would be better to return – supermarkets in Goa are fully stocked versus in parts of the UK where media coverage keeps showing empty shelves (although that in itself is probably already inducing panic). We have a whole beach to ourselves which is a great way to self-isolate versus being locked down in London. If we leave, will we be quarantined for 14 days when we get back, or before we leave India? We don’t know.
Supermarkets still fully stocked in Goa!
But for now, while we plot what the best move is, we are sending out our best wishes to our friends, family and everyone all over the world, whether that be in a lockdown at home, struggling financially as a result of the economic turmoil gripping the globe or if you are still abroad and unsure of what to do as we are now.
We will get through this as a human race and we will be better prepared for any future pandemic that comes our way. For now stay safe, take care of one another, help people who need it, spare a thought for the vulnerable, try not to over-hype the situation which can surely make economic problems worse and most importantly don’t let the unprecedented circumstances change your values or morals.
Until next time!
Shri & Firuza
India Coronavirus Update on 21 March 2020
The failed escape!
We tried to get a flight back to the UK when we learned India was shutting down its international airspace on the 22nd March 2020 and introducing curfews. We managed to get a flight from Goa to Mumbai where the majority of flights back to London were going from. However, we were unable to secure a flight back to the UK as everything we tried to book was selling out before we reached the payment section.
We tried virtually all reasonably priced flights to London, we looked at options going to other cities in England, Scotland, Wales and even tried to do a multiple connecting flights to Ireland that went via London Heathrow that had a self-transfer at Heathrow (with the intention of just getting off in Heathrow) but these still sold out. Fate did not want us to leave India for some reason.
Goa International Airport almost deserted.
From Mumbai Airport Shri’s uncle collected us and we stayed the night in the outskirts of the city at a hotel, which is empty except for us. But, the three of us have now been put on temporary quarantine for 3 days by authorities as a precaution to avoid further potential spread, despite us having no symptoms. And so begins the quarantine…
So we’ll be keeping busy writing blogs, recapping our travels in India, making fun of each other where possible and playing lots of miniature chess. Indeed Shri and his uncle have already played chess once and his uncle insisted that the blog include his victory over Shri this morning – so here it is: he beat me!
Getting through a mini quarantine.
We’ll keep you updated on how the situation continues to change in India, but the authorities are getting stricter and Mumbai is now completely shut down. There are many theories that India is on course but still behind where Europe is at the moment but there’s no saying as to how things could change.
For now, stay safe wherever you are, follow guidance to avoid further spread and continue to be compassionate to others as needed!
Shri & Firuza