By PTI
AURANGABAD: For Bhumika Shardul and her friends, the 72-hour journey to Ukraine’s border is now almost a blur.
The only thing that kept them going was the resolve to return home, she says.
Shardul, who hails from Aurangabad in central Maharashtra, was among hundreds of young Indian women and men who had traveled to Ukraine to study medicine and got stranded when Russia invaded the eastern European country last week.
Shardul, a student of Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, reached Aurangabad on Thursday night.
“On February 24, the situation in Ukraine worsened and we decided to return to India. But it was not easy and getting a cab or private vehicle to reach the Poland border was very difficult,” she told PTI.
“Then we found a cab driver who was ready to give us a ride. We thought we would now reach the border without hassle, but we were wrong,” she said.
The distance was not much, but they ran into a traffic jam 30 km before the border.
“The cab driver refused to go further. So we walked nearly 30 km with each of us carrying about 25 kg of luggage. The temperature sometimes dropped to -7 degrees Celsius,” Shardul said.
She had four apples, a water bottle and a couple of biscuit packets in her bag, on which she survived till reaching the border.
“It took us nearly 72 hours. But there was no time to rest. We had to walk to another check post for further clearance,” she said.
The Ukrainian soldiers at border posts were certainly not friendly, according to Shardul.
“They tried to threaten us at gun point. By this time we had almost lost our senses. One of my friends doesn’t even remember what he was doing there. Only our goal of crossing the Poland border brought us home safely,” she added.
She expects that the evacuation crisis caused by the war in Ukraine will make the authorities in India reform the medical education system.
“We are middle-class people. Many families like mine have the wish to see their children become doctors and serve society. But in India one needs at least one crore rupees to become a doctor. There are very few seats. That is why students like me opt for Ukraine,” she said.
