When Steven Winter runs his gaze along the roof of the Candolim-based hotel, it isn’t in admiration. The 56-year-old wagon driver from Blackpool is finding his expertise as a former roof-fitter a better way of passing the long hours of his locked-down holiday than “watching TV, sleeping and being bored to tears”.
“It (roof) doesn’t need any fixing,” says the British national, flashing a broad smile that hides the “mild jitters” he’s got about his first visit to a country that is in curfew mode over Covid-19.
Tourism stakeholders in Goa are conservatively pegging the number of foreigners currently unable to leave the state due to travel restrictions at over 1,500. These include about 1,000 Russians, while the rest are predominantly British and a few Europeans. The figure includes long-haul and short-stay visitors.
“Most Russians are in the Arambol-Mandrem belt and have been here for a month already. Many have applied for an extension of their visas,” says a source in the Russian consulate. He claims many chose not to take the recent Russian flight out of Goa as the non-refundable tickets were thrice the regular price and taxis to the airport were unavailable because of the lockdown.
He adds that since a majority of Russians rent premises they have not been badly affected by closed restaurants “since, like locals, they too stocked up on grains and groceries in anticipation of the lockdown”.
However this is not the case for those holed up in hotels and resorts, like Steven and “best mate” Gareth Hobson, a legal complaints manager for a British transport company.
Recalling their ordeal on March 22, the first day of India’s ‘Junta Curfew’, Hobson, who is on his fifth visit to Goa, says, “When we stepped out of our hotel at 9 pm (when curfew ended) we found all the restaurants closed. We couldn’t find food anywhere and we had each had only an omelette in the morning. Finally, ‘Mango Grove’ took pity on us and gave us some food for free. We were starving.”
How are they getting food now? “Well, there’s takeaway and a few locals are ‘sneaking’ us some food and water,” says Hobson, “deeply grateful” for the help they’ve received.
In Dona Paula, the owner of a boutique resort that has a few stranded British nationals says his clients have taken to eating just two meals a day. “They know that we too are struggling to get supplies and are cooperating with us,” says the owner, wishing not to be identified.
It’s the same in Arpora, where a resort is open for “just one elderly American couple”. “Even though they’re not our regular, repeat clients, I can’t throw them out. Where will they go? How will they manage?” asks the manager.
Livid at how foreign embassies have done little to help those stranded in Goa, the manager, wishing anonymity, says most foreigners “have been left to fend for themselves”.
It’s a sentiment that echoes among most of the stranded. Apart from the anxiety of not knowing when they will return home, many have lost money on non-refundable tickets they bought in the hope of catching connecting flights from Delhi or Mumbai, only to find that their countries had stopped all flights. One foreign embassy source spoke of a visitor in such dire financial straits that he “wanted to be arrested so that he could have a roof above his head and daily meals”.
In Benaulim a local married to a Russian says his wife will return to Moscow only if there is a direct flight from Goa. “She does not want to get stuck in Mumbai or Delhi.”
Not getting stuck in Mumbai was uppermost in the mind of Sol de Montard of France too. A musician and long-stay visitor to Goa, the 27-year-old had a Mumbai-Singapore-Cairns (Australia) flight on March 18. Travelling to Mumbai by bus “on the day Shigmo was underway in full swing in Mapusa”, he was advised by his family back in France to stay on in Goa itself as global travel was in a flux. “So I got off the bus when it stopped for dinner (at Kudal) and told my friend (back in Arambol) to come pick me up,” says Montard.
The friend, Neptune Chapotin, an American Person of Indian Origin (PIO), finally found Sol “in the pitch darkness” at 3 am and the duo rode back to a “stunning” dawn breaking over Goa.
For many stranded tourists, the end of their present adventure would be a breaking dawn.