Waiting to come home – An Indian couple stuck in Istanbul for nearly 2 months shares their quarantine story

• The Narendra Modi government is conducting the world's largest evacuation program as it begins to bring home millions of Indians stuck around the world.
  
• The first phase of Air India flights have taken off, hundreds of others wait for the time the flight schedule lists a plane to pick them up.
  
• Among them are Kaushik and Carol Mitra in Istanbul, Turkey and here's their story.

Having travelled to Turkey on a leisure trip while the coronavirus pandemic was just starting, a couple from India are stuck in Istanbul since March 14. They were supposed to return on March 23, but by then Turkey had become a hotspot, and India had closed its borders.

The Indian government has started the world's biggest evacuation plan - bringing home Indian citizens stuck in various parts of the world. And while the first phase of Air India flights have taken off, hundreds of others wait for the time the flight schedule lists a plane to pick them up. Among them are Kaushik and Carol Mitra in Istanbul, Turkey.

“We had contacted the Turkish Embassy in Delhi and they had said it was okay to travel as Turkey then was one of the least affected countries. But now there are about 160 Indian tourists along with in-transit passengers, students, who are stuck here,” Kaushik Mitra, a marketing communications professional, told Business Insider.


The cases went up quickly and soon things changed. Hotels began shutting down, as they couldn't run beyond a certain point. The couple has shifted two hotels and is currently quarantined in an apartment in Istanbul.

While the Mitras are comfortable now, he said that students and in-transit passengers have faced a lot of difficulty as the lockdown began. “People were running out of food, money and shelter,” he said and added that in the beginning people wanted to do 'dharnas’ demanding to go back home.

But soon the Indian embassy within its limited powers, took charge.

“They created a WhatsApp group and pulled out people who were stranded in different airports, arranged food for them. Now, the Embassy has also offered an option where 6 people can get together and take up an apartment, where they will be staying at the Government of India's cost,” he said.

The people will have to pay for their flights and once they reach Delhi too, they will have to pay for the hotel where they will be quarantined for another 14 days.

They understand that currently the priority is to rescue thousands of Indians stuck without jobs and homes in different countries. “But we are all waiting for that magic update on the group saying that our evacuation flight is here,” he said.