Hollo there.

I went to New Delhi in India for a medical evacuation on Christmas, it’s been a while since I posted last time though.

Have you had a nice Christmas day last year? We spent unforgettable Christmas day last year which I’m going to talk it to you later.

We got the case for medical evacuation on Christmas last year anyways.

Since this case was set in such a short notice, our doctor and I applied a Visa for entering India as a “Visa on arrival” after landing India at the Airport. It’s good time to share about Visa application for you. As you know that Visa application should be done by prior certain period of time if you go some countries.

Online Visa application is a major method, but if you go countries where requires you to apply the visa, but you think that is too late, then you could apply it as a “Visa on arrival” after arriving. In order to get smoothly through the immigration after landing, you might want to print the form out from the website of Indian Immigration or Japanese airline, then fill it out in advance.

Only cash (Indian Rupee) was available on the day when we went to India in December 2023, so please take cash out if you go India, but the situation will be changing, so please check when you are going there. You need to pay the money for the Visa on the counter just before an immigration gate.

By the way, medical evacuation itself as the main event, I do not have anything that I can tell you. This is because we could take a patient back from Indian Hospital to a Japanese Hospital safely.

However, our doctor and I had unforgettable and terrible happening in India on that day, so let me talk about this to you.

After landing India, we got the driver who was deployed from health insurance company, we were dropped around the hotel we booked where mall nearby. The driver and we thought the hotel is located inside the mall because the address indicates the mall. We were roaming and asking around the place to the local people in multiple times, and you may be forgetting the date at that time. On Christmas day!! Around the mall was bustling with people of course. We had to carry so many medical equipment with the situation.

The situation was getting worse and worse. No one knows the hotel, someone said it is located over there, then we went the place, then we asked another person around the place, and she said the hotel might be the place where we were before..  We were walking around the hotel for 3 hours!!(It was already 23:00 p.m.)

We encountered one person working at the restaurant of the mall who said that the hotel changed the name 3 months back, he gave us the actual name of the hotel. It turns out, the hotel was located on the opposite site of the mall where it looks much much different atmosphere from the place of mall. I would say it looks like slums. I put attached the picture for you, and the woman on the picture is our doctor.

We arrived the hotel, well.. I should say the motel, not only outside horrible looking but inside as well..  No sanitized linens that means I was 100% sure all linens including towels, pillowcases and bed sheets were not washed, and all linens were weirdly damp. In addition to this, they had hairs and dusts on it. I did not want to lean even touch to my skin, and moreover, shower did not work, so I decided not to take a shower at this hotel. I wish I could prepare my condition for the medical evacuation, but I could not do it. I lay down on the bed and covered myself with my coat, that was all I could do at the hotel. Furthermore, in the early morning, I heard dingoes was burking outside, they may be merely communicating each other, but for me it was scaring me.

On the next day of the nightmare, we had a spare time for 3 hours before our flight, so we booked a different (4 stars) hotel to spend a few hours to take a shower and charge myself (just 1 hour sleep), then we flew back to Japan for taking the patient back to Japanese Hospital.

We usually book a hotel through a worldwide hotel company, and we had the horrible hotel from the company, but we had no luck this time unfortunately.

Even though we were on the nightmare-like circumstances as a background for this medical evacuation, we are glad to be able to accomplish our task safely this time as well.

It is okay as long as we could get back to Japan without injuries and any devastated happenings because our priority is always patient and our safety. So, I’ll take this nightmare as a countermeasure for the next time. 

See you in the next post!!