05.29.2020 marks on of the most unique day of my life. You must be wondering “why?” On this day my evacuation was done from the United States back home to India during the COVID19 crisis.
I was a student in the United States and my university got shut down in March 2020 with no clear notification. Initially they had shut down for 2 weeks and later when COVID19 was declared as a pandemic they shut it down for the entire spring term as well as the summer term.
I planned to leave for India and contacted various departments of the University, but nobody was certain when the University is going to reopen. I waited until I got the final clarification but I guess it was too late!
I got it clarified by March 22 and booked the ticket for April 1st (wanted to finish off my pending tasks). India announced lockdown on 24th March, and thus begins my stranded journey. On 4th May, India decided to bring back their stranded citizens through evacuation flights and Naval ships. I was really excited to know this because I will get to be with my husband after a really long time.
They launched a Mission on May 7th which was called as the “Vande Bharat Mission”. Vande Bharat mission aims to bring back Indian Citizens from various countries. All the rescue operations are carried out by Air India, Indian national air carrier. The selection of every individual is based on the electronic random selection based on the compelling reasons.
The Indian embassy in United states would decide who gets to travel on compelling grounds. There were 4 different consulates in the USA. New York, Chicago, Washington DC and San Francisco and also all the flights would take off from these places respectively.
As many as 40,000 Indians have had registered for these flights and number of flights sent to rescue Indians are so very less. Each flight had a capacity to carry around 300-330 passengers including business and first-class passengers. The number to me looked very depressing, I started to feel I will never get a chance to fly.
We had a Facebook group called “SOS global Indians”. When I joined, the group had around 2000 people but now it has more than 15000 people who are waiting to hear the news of them being allowed to go back to India. Many of them have a family emergency, deaths, parents critically ill, some have lost their jobs, visa expiring, and some are students.
Government of India and Washington DC embassy has released a form (click here) on May 4th 2020 that I filled up.
Phase – 1
The mission started on May 7th but in the US, the mission begins on May 9th and the first flight took off from San Francisco to Mumbai- Hyderabad on 9th, that was a historic moment for India as they had launched the world’s biggest rescue mission. The phase 1 lasted for around 7 days with each day one flight use to take off from different consulate.
NO, I didn’t get a chance to fly during Phase 1.
Phase – 2
Phase 2 started from May 16 and is still going on, as of this day when I publish this post. I wanted to travel back in phase 2 at least as I didn’t get a chance to fly during phase 1. The bookings of phase 2 started and I still didn’t hear anything from the embassy. People were posting on Facebook about their experience with embassy and some rejecting the offer (for them my question is, why did you even register?)
I come under New York Consulate and I made multiple calls requesting them for the travel. I always got a canned reply which goes like this:
As we all understand that this is an evolving situation.
Thousands of people have registered and reached out to us, requesting for travel to India on the special flights and all are compelling reasons.
Please note that these flights are planned in phased manner.
Due to large number of applicants, everybody registered may not have their names covered in the initial flights.
I was heartbroken but didn’t want to give up at the same time. I started contacting other consulates. I reached out to Chicago, heard the same thing as New York. I realized I will never get a chance to travel with Vande Bharat Mission as number of people registering each day got increase and I saw my reason for travel is not compelling enough when compared to others.
I used to follow various news channels, twitter and other media for the information regarding commercial flight operations, but nothing (as of now also) is clear. According to aviation minister’s tweet they may resume it by Diwali (which is on Nov 4) that’s a long wait!
Finally, I gave a call to Houston embassy (this comes under Chicago jurisdiction for Vande Bharath), people over there were pretty understanding. They took my email id and phone number asked me to send an email regarding my travel request. There was a very sweet lady called Yasmeen who took my case on priority and started the process of my evacuation. Unfortunately, this couldn’t happen without the approval of the Consul General. She told me I will try my level best rest is upon CGI Houston. She put me on call with the CGI Houston which was a big step towards my evacuation. CGI Houston was the nicest person I have spoken to he spoke me like a family member and allocated a seat on Humanitarian grounds.
This just made my day & all this happened on 26th May, the travel was on 29th May from Chicago to Ahmedabad- Hyderabad.
I received an email confirming my selection the very same day, I had to mail my confirmation of travel to Air India and send them my credit card details so that they can process the ticketing. It is not the same as commercial booking where we go to different websites and type our destination make payment and confirm bookings. I reached Chicago airport from New Jersey on 29th by taking a domestic flight and the same evening I had AirIndia flight to India.
I boarded the flight at around 10 pm CST and AI126 was scheduled to depart at 11:25pm CST. As per the schedule we took off at exact. 11:25pm CST.
No these are non-scheduled flights which are organized by government of India to evacuate stranded Indians. Every step is GOI monitored.
Attaching the video of my experience. Tried to recreate Airlift song in my way!
I know many of you may find it dramatic, its easy for everyone to say so, but its hard to be quarantined away from your family in a different country and with no hopes of returning. You can only relate to this if you are away from your family and you can do nothing about it other than praying for your return. Don’t judge too soon.
I hope you all have happy and healthy quarantine.
Big thanks to all people who are happy on my arrival, me and my husband are blessed to have you as family and friends.
Right now, I am quarantined at Marriot Hyderabad, I will make another blog of my quarantine experience. Thanks for reading! do watch the video I am sure you will like it 🙂