The Unraveling

For Kirk’s work, we were to be in India after Cairo. Three days before our flight we learned India closed their border. Kirk’s work acquaintance from India was completely surprised and shocked that this happened so quickly.

We rearranged our flights to the Maldives. We have always wanted to go there. These are amazingly beautiful tropical islands that are disappearing due to rising sea levels. Per my research several types of including hammerhead sharks can be seen while snorkeling and diving!

As things on the news escalated we knew we didn’t want to be stranded in the Maldives (what we understand is it’s expensive and you can only drink alcohol in your resort with a big cost, which would be fine but not for long term!) so Kirk begin planning our exit from there. It took him most of the day to find something that wasn’t through Europe yet got us out of the Middle East. Australia was the best option for our next destination.

The day of our flight we learned the Maldives were to close their border at midnight which would be before we arrived. Our connection was to be through Dubai so we thought we could at least get to Dubai and then figure out where to go from there.

When we checked in with the airport agent he was confused saying our tickets were still to India, yes we had received the confirmation that our tickets were changed to the Maldives but we hadn’t paid the difference, when rearranging our flights the phone agent was to call us back to collect the fee. They never called but we received a confirmation email so we thought we were all set. We explained our trails to the agent and showed him the email that the Maldives were closing at midnight. The agent said that it hadn’t been announced so he didn’t know about the closing but He also didn’t seem too surprised.

At that point the agent was finding humor in our situation and told Kirk to go with another agent, he held my passport and our luggage and asked me to stand nearby. Kirk was taken out of the secure area and worked with that agent to find a flight beyond Dubai. Dubai wasn’t having anything to do with people staying there, we had to have a destination beyond Dubai and it wasn’t going to be in the Maldives!

The agent asked Kirk where he wanted to go, Kirk said anywhere in Central or South America without going through Europe. This was at the time things were escalating in the US. The agent said name a city so Kirk started to rattle off the cities, flights were either full or cancelled. Finally they landed on a flight to São Paulo the agent booked it and we were good to go with Dubai as a layover. Kirk said the agent was laughing the entire time.

We saw both of these agents later as we were boarding the plane and they just laughed finding our journey humorous. That was at the beginning of all this chaos, I wonder what they’re thinking now. We are grateful for their assistance.