REAL TALK WITH DANIELLE - Why We Almost Stayed In India During Coronavirus
/
I have been traveling the world with my husband since December 9th - the day before the first case of coronavirus was identified. The virus began to affect our travels in Southeast Asia and so began the dread of going home early. We received forms in Bali that proved we did not have the virus. We gave our contact details to every museum in Singapore - all of which were virtually empty. After a month in India, we finally had to decide whether to end the trip in Goa.
Prime Minister Modi announced the Janata Curfew on March 22nd. We were not allowed to leave our AirBNB between 9 AM and 9 PM. At night, we rode our motorbike to three small grocery stores to buy essentials. The curfew was extended three more days, and then India locked down on March 25th until at least April 15th. The uncertainty about what would happen sunk in.
Meanwhile, the United States closed the border on March 20th. My parents called to ask when we were coming home. My grandparents texted with advice to call the US embassy. My friends texted and emailed to check on us. We felt unsure… the thing was, we weren’t convinced that it was the best idea to return to the United States.
Our friends and family were understandably worried. It’s no secret that India carries a less than ideal reputation for travel. Yet, having been there, there were multiple reasons to stay in India that would have made for a less convenient, but ultimately similar situation as in the United States. I want to explain why we stayed for such a long time, and our decision to come home.
Goa, India is not a dangerous place. It is the fantasy version of Boca Raton, Florida and in no way resembles Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a combination of resorts filled with retiree visitors, incredibly kind and underpaid Indian people working in the tourism industry, Los Angeles-level sunsets, and very cheap, authentic Indian cuisine. I’ll admit that I feel very defensive of India as a safe place now that I have been there, but I understand that for most Americans, the only reference point is what we are shown in the media. Guys, I don’t know how else to say this - American news is completely skewed when it comes to representing India. I can’t tell you how many travelers we met from places as far as Canada and New Zealand who said they had never met Americans while traveling abroad. Of course most Americans are afraid of India, most of us have never been there, and are afraid of going because we are fed strong images of its dangers. I am adamant about stopping this messaging because at the bottom of all that fear is privilege and racism, and, so help me, I will not listen to another word of it. I am here to dispel the myth. At no time during my month in India did I ever feel threatened by anyone or anything.
We had access to delicious food while in India because our host was delivering food from his friends who work in the restaurant industry. It’s important to understand that once Prime Minister Modi announced the curfew with absolutely no plan in place for grocery stores, Indian people mostly took matters into their own hands. Goan people started working within their own communities to get their basic needs met. This is the advantage of a collectivist culture where people rely on each other for help, rather than an individualist culture where every man for himself leads to hoarding toilet paper. The Indian grocery stores were running low on essentials for the first few days after the Janata Curfew, but afterward we were able to get what we needed.
4 months as backpackers taught us how to live without American conveniences. Material possessions are nice, but not essential to living comfortably. In Goa, we had clothes, food, and our computers. (We even had air conditioning!) We didn’t want for anything else because we found ways to view this quarantine as an opportunity to dive into things that were important to us rather than a punishment that had been thrust upon us. We were content to work on writing, making music, and getting in touch with our spiritual selves. We found ways to fill ourselves and our days without needing the familiarity of home comforts.
Being home is an illusion of control. We are just as likely to get coronavirus in the United States as we would have been in Goa. I’d go as far to say that we are more likely to get it in the United States because our government refuses to take this virus seriously. Even if coronavirus didn’t exist, anything can happen at any time to any person. There is a zen in accepting the uncontrollable. We went into this trip assuming we would contract Delhi belly or Bali belly or some kind of horrible sickness before we got home. (Thankfully, we didn’t). Being backpackers, we had long since rid ourselves of the belief that home is inherently safer than anywhere else in the world.
Transitioning back to the US is expensive. We do not have health insurance in the US, and it is one of the things we are working to reinstate. We would easily have been able to afford care for coronavirus in India given the currency exchange rate. It also cost us $1700 per person to fly back to the US. Thank god we had savings for this trip but neither of us is making an income to replenish that.
There would be no social distancing on the journey home. The first leg was a completely packed, 20-hour bus ride from Goa to Mumbai. The bathroom stops included 200 of us opening a door to a squat toilet, peeing in a ditch, touching that door again, and praying that every single person before us had used hand sanitizer. In Mumbai, we joined 200 more Americans traveling from all over India, spending a full day in a crowded room at the consulate, and another 16 hours on an airplane. Traveling in tight quarters with 400 strangers for 3 days seemed like a sure-fire way to contract the virus. What’s more, if we are carriers, then we are contributing to the problem by traveling back to the US.
India is responding to the virus with appropriate action. The US is not. In March, the world watched in horror as the pandemic spread throughout Italy. In March, Italy sent out numerous, urgent messages for the rest of the world to lock down and avoid what they went through. In March, we kept our notifications on as India listened and the US did not. As of this writing, the United States has the leading number of COVID-19 cases by more than three times the amount of any other country. The United States President fired the global pandemic response team in 2018. The United States, one of the world leaders in healthcare, failed to prevent the spread of the virus. In short, we felt hesitant about coming back home to a country that wouldn’t take action against the virus. What was so safe about that?
My husband and I are 26 and 27 years old with no history of immunodeficiency issues. Even if we contract the virus, we are statistically unlikely to die. I understand that the media is primarily advertising stories about the deaths of outliers (people in my demographic). My heart goes out to those people and their families. I acknowledge that publishing these stories helps to keep healthy people in my generation aware of how serious this is. However, I also know this is a tactic that will be used to scare people who do not bother to look at the statistics. The facts are that my age puts me at a .2% chance of death and my health history puts me at a .9% risk. If we look purely at the numbers, I feel more than secure that my husband and I will be fine no matter what country we are in even if we get the virus.
Despite all of these reasons to stay in India, my husband and I ultimately decided to go home. Here is why:
Our original reason for being in India was to travel. We wouldn’t be able to continue our journey from India to Dubai to Athens to Budapest to Vienna (I can’t keep going, it’s too heartbreaking) because coronavirus put a stop to tourism for the foreseeable future. It was no longer a question of if we would go home, it was a question of when.
Having a place to stay for free was one of the main criteria to even consider coming back to the US. Our family has helped enormously by letting us stay at a summer home which was not occupied. We are so grateful because this has given us a place to live and takes a huge financial burden off of us.
We couldn’t start apartment hunting in India because we didn’t have cell phone service there. We needed to be in the US to start connecting with realtors or homeowners who were leasing apartments.
If we were coming home, then we needed to start thinking about income. I am a psychotherapist and can’t work outside of the state where I am licensed. I am also a voice teacher, and at least needed a keyboard to offer online lessons. My husband is a musician and it was necessary to get back to his instruments and music gear to continue producing projects.
Tourists in India need a 30-day visa. The Indian government dragged their feet on extending our visas. They only extended mine through the end of April, which meant I would have needed to apply for another extension at the end of our second month there. It also meant my husband was technically overstaying his visa. The worst case scenario would likely have resulted in a fee, but technically India can put foreigners in jail for overstaying a visa. The US embassy also informed us that India was allowing people to exit the country with no penalties on the US government-chartered flights, which meant that India wanted us to leave.
There’s a huge mental health component to this virus that needed addressing. Although I mentioned that being home is an illusion of control, it’s an effective one. When I walked into the US embassy, it was the first time in a month that I had been in a fully-staffed building where employees were giving clear directions, verbally and written, to everyone about the next steps in the process of returning home. Although the staff was no doubt winging it, and has never dealt with this issue, it still felt relieving because they acted like they knew what they were doing. The comforts of being home and familiarity of being close to our loved ones feels the same. Even though I know we are not actually in control of anything, it feels more like we are, which relieves stress. On a side note, when we relieve stress, our immune systems are better at staving off illness.
I never felt stuck in India. I was sad to leave India. I was also grateful to be from a country that helped us get home. I truly don’t feel that much has changed since we arrived in the US except that getting groceries and doing our laundry is more convenient. I still hear surprise in people’s voices when they ask, “Aren’t you relieved to be back?” Honestly, I wasn’t that stressed out about being in India. I understand why most people were afraid for us while we were in India, but other people’s fear is not my fear.
It took a lot of emotional work to block out the voices that kept telling us what the “right” decision was in terms of leaving India. It took a lot more emotional work to set up those boundaries with compassion and respect. I am so grateful for the people who were able to share their concerns and make it very clear that they believed in us to make the right decision for ourselves. I am most grateful to my husband who helped me untangle other people’s worry from my own. Ultimately, we made the decision to return to the United States on our own terms. I grieve the two months of the trip that were lost, but life is unpredictable and sometimes that’s just the way it goes. I know it will not be long before I’m back on a flight to see more of this big, not-so-scary world.
Want more blog-y goodness? Tips and tricks for travel? Insight into mental health conundrums? Shared experiences in creativity and artistic expression? Scroll to the very bottom and subscribe!