VISAKHAPATNAM/VIJAYAWADA: Telugu students in Ukraine faced a lot of hardships to reach India as a few of them walked miles together to reach the nearest country’s borders. While some managed to escape bombings and proceed, others easily reached the borders of Hungary.
Many of them witnessed horrifying moments throughout their journey to India as they were forced to walk in minus temperatures without food and water.
Even after reaching the borders of Romania and Poland, they waited for almost two to three days in open areas in bone-biting cold conditions to gain entry into those countries. Many of them, even after reaching their hometowns in AP, have not come out of the trauma. A few of them visited hospitals for treatment.
An MBA second-year student from Vizag, K Kavita, managed to escape from the first airstrike on Kyiv on February 24. Her group was said to be the first group that left Kyiv city on February 24 but reached Vizag on the late night of March 2. They were forced to walk for almost 36 km from Lviv city to the borders of Poland in minus degrees temperatures for two days. They were stuck at the borders for another two days as authorities did not allow them to enter their country.
Exhausted by the stressful journey from Ukraine to Vizag, Kavita is now suffering from fever and also lost sense in body parts due to spending days together in chilled weather conditions. Her parents Appa Rao, a Vizag Port employee, and her mother Ester Rani took her to the hospital.
Interestingly, Kavita landed in Ukraine on February 21 after a gap of three months from Vizag. On the morning of February 24, she saw fighter planes on the skies of Kyiv city and heard big sounds of bombings very close to her hostel in Kyiv. “In just three days of my arrival, I witnessed all these horrible and terrible incidents. We, a group of seven students, decided to leave the country on day-1 of bombing and reached Lviv, 560 km away from Kyiv, on February 26,” she said.
When the traffic came to a grinding halt at Lviv, they decided to walk and reach the Poland border as early as possible. But it took them two days and another two days for border crossing. On their way to the border, many shells of bombs were spotted on the way.
Meanwhile, students recalled their pathetic condition before they were evacuated to India. Mylavarapu Sravan Deepak, a native of Vijayawada who is studying MBBS sixth year at Vinnytsia National Pirogiv Medical University at Vinystia in Ukraine said: “We lost hope and took shelter in a bunker. We spent two days without food and we did not even have sufficient water to drink. I never experienced such pain and I went into shock till I was received by Indian embassy and brought back to India,” Sravan Deepak added.
