Travel in times of Covid-19: I took one of India’s first flights in months. It was surreal

As I checked in for one of the first flights in India in two months, the baggage-tag dispenser spat out five boarding passes for me. Given the morning I’d had, this latest glitch wasn’t much of a surprise.

I’d received a call around 1 a.m. from IndiGo to say my flight from New Delhi to Mumbai was canceled. That’s it. No explanation. Turns out it was one of at least 80 flights canceled from the Indian capital on Monday, the day flights in the country were supposed to resume. Nobody I spoke to seemed to know what was happening, who needed to go into quarantine, or if planes would even be allowed to land at their destination. People were unsure if their tickets were of any use at all.

I had to come up with another plan to get to Mumbai and then on to see my family for the first time in two months. We had suddenly found ourselves stranded apart because of the nationwide lockdown. I’d booked my ticket the moment rules were relaxed to allow some domestic flights. From Mumbai, I planned to travel to a village where my kids have been staying with their grandparents and my husband since the government abruptly ordered everyone not to leave wherever they were in late March because of the coronavirus.