An unexpected road trip from Delhi to Kerala

After about a month’s quarantine, students from various states started returning to their hometowns. To initiate our travel to Kerala, we contacted a lot of people, including our respective MPs, district collectors, etc. We hardly received a positive response from any of them. Finally, a few of the students arranged a bus by contacting a travel agency. We were ready to bear all the expenses. We informed the Kerala house authorities in Delhi who promised to help us with the border crossing etc. The Malayalee associations and a few NGOs supported us to arrange food for the three days of travel.

We received the travel pass and each of our no COVID certificates at around 1 o’clock on April 11th. There started our journey to our hometown after about a month’s quarantine. Though all of us were excited, we were all enough worried about how the travel was going to be. It was three days of travel with no proper arrangements. What made it stand out was the fact that India was under a 21 days lockdown. We knew that it was going to be tiresome. We did not have any high expectations regarding the food and other facilities on the road.

Though all of us were tested negative, the possibility of contracting the virus on the way was still there. We assured ourselves by wearing masks and not getting down the bus unless necessary. I slept all night and woke up around 5 am to see a beautiful sunrise. Thanks to the jio networks for having kept me updated each time we entered a different state. According to jio, we were in Rajasthan. I did not even know that we would have to cover a small part of Rajasthan.

Quarantine Days

On March 15, we landed at the Delhi international airport. The officials took us to the ITBP camp near Chhawla, Delhi, 14 days of quarantine were arranged over there. They provided us with all the essentials like masks, blankets, water bottles, individual cupboards, soap, kettle, slippers, etc. The food was nutritious as the diet included fruits, milk, salad, etc. Every day we were subjected to a routine medical examination which included temperature and BP check-up. Until the test result came, we were all tensed as we did not know if we had contracted the virus. For once, none of us wanted to be positive but negative. On the third day, the results were out. Except for two of them, all the passengers in our flight were tested negative. Doctors shifted the infected to a hospital and sanitized their room. The everyday medical examination continued even after the test.

My room consisted of 7 girls, including me. We were all allotted with unique bed numbers. Both my friends were with me while the rest of them were from Venice. Soon we became friends and were finding new ways to kill time. We installed games applications for ludo, UNO, etc. Well, social distancing at its best. We were tested again after about 14 days, luckily all of us tested negative. Honestly, it was a huge relief. The staff at the ITBP center were quite friendly and were always at service. The facilities provided on day one did not deteriorate even after the first few days.

Milan to Delhi during the days of coronavirus

Phase I

I was reading the news and came to know about the new virus that was spreading in China. Well, I did not read in detail about it. The virus was not even called covid19. Later I came across more articles regarding the same and gradually understood the severity of the situation in China. Countries began evacuating their citizens and the world was slowly realizing the potential crisis. Even then, we were in denial because we were living in Italy. Honestly, I did not expect it to hit Europe. Exams, study holidays, cooking experiments, and our lives went on smoothly without any troubles.

Phase II

The virus had started spreading in India as well. It had reached Kerala to be more precise. But Kerala had taken enough measures, in fact, praiseworthy measures which helped them to contain the virus. Within a few days from then, Italy reported its first case. Luckily it didn’t spread much and all the other infected patients healed. Though we were slightly concerned, we were still in denial. We tried to believe that the virus would not hit any other country and that we were safe.

Phase III

Not after many days, Italy started reporting cases. The cases were in Lombardy, the province which includes Milan. We followed the news regularly, debated about the spread of the virus and measures that we should take. Even then never did we expect the virus to spread this vigorously, not just around Italy but around the entire world.

We started getting messages and calls from our loved ones inquiring about our health and situation in our area. We were pretty optimistic and believed that we could survive without facing many difficulties. Against everybody’s expectation, the count increased drastically, infecting almost thousands within days. Most of the students returned to their respective home countries. The university was supposed to reopen in the last week of February but postponed it by a week.