Border closures have jacked up expenses and made Covid travel a preserve of the well-heeled. For others, the detours due to Covid guidelines may be forced but the wanderlust is not
Alka Kaushik in Mexico, en route to the US
Alok Kothari, who runs a leather business in Mumbai, and his wife were planning to visit their son and daughter-in-law in London after the birth of their grandchild in March. But as the second Covid-19 wave began to sweep across India in April and countries shuttered their borders, on April 23, the UK added India to its red list that mandates severe travel restrictions—a 10-day institutional quarantine and multiple RT-PCR tests.
In early August, even though the UK continued to keep Indian travellers on the strictest leash, the Kotharis packed their bags. To the UK eventually, but first to Switzerland, which was among the first European countries to open up to double-vaccinated Indians on June 23. “Instead of spending 10 days cooped up in a hotel room in the UK and paying £1,750 per person for it, we decided to ‘quarantine’ in Switzerland. There, we could move around without any restrictions and later on enter the UK without any fuss,” says Kothari.
(This story appears in the 08 October, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)