My Quarantine Diary

Isolated Tourism

- Zara Mandviwalla Akbarally

‘Quarantine’; a word that makes the hair stand on one’s body, a word that was amiss to our vocabulary before the year 2020, is now used conventionally among all societies in the world.

PCR tests, Level 1 ‘Safe and Secure’ Hotels, mandatory COVID-19 Insurance Cover, bio bubble, mandatory 14-day quarantine; these are words introduced out of the necessity caused by the pandemic. Every country around the world has approached COVID-19 in a different manner; however, my experience is in Sri Lanka, a place I now call home.

My flight from Sri Lanka to Pakistan was the easy part. My return on the other hand, was significantly more challenging.

Step 1 was the online application of my visa to enable my entry via the tourism route back to Sri Lanka. The application was the same as it has always been, except for the “Emergency Alert” which appears on the page, detailing new instructions that are to be complied with before travelling to Sri Lanka.

The alert appears as a pop-up notice as opposed to a detailed list on a separate tab and is easy to miss by travellers unaware of the new instructions, procedures and protocols in place for travel to Sri Lanka.

This appeared to be the case for a few passengers on our flight albeit only a handful, who were unaware of the tourism route that can be accessed by dual citizens, spouses of foreign nationals and paid commercial passengers with foreign passports, who were to be transferred to designated quarantine hotels by the Sri Lankan Army, at their own expense, upon arrival to Sri Lanka.