New Delhi: As the Sudan clashes showed no signs of de-escalating a week since the conflict began, Sidharth Rai realised it was time for his wife and their two preschool-aged kids to leave the country where he had lived for over a decade.
He and a group of 47 other Indians decided to make the treacherous journey from Khartoum to Port Sudan by themselves on 22 April. They were then taken aboard a Navy ship to Saudi Arabia, and were among the first Indians to return to the country Wednesday night.
“We sensed the situation was deteriorating, the war is only going to escalate. As fighting began to get worse even after a week, a decision needed to be made, a decision of life or death. We chose to take the risk and leave Khartoum by ourselves,” Rai, an operations manager at Olam Agro, a Singapore-based agri-business company, told ThePrint over the phone.
After an armed conflict broke out between rival factions of the Sudanese military in the capital, Khartoum, on 15 April, many countries have begun efforts to evacuate their citizens. India launched its own evacuation drive — Operation Kaveri — on 24 April, and hundreds of Indians have been rescued since then.
Treacherous journey to Port Sudan
Nishant Singhania, another one of this group of Indians that left Khartoum, said life was becoming increasingly difficult for those stranded there.
Living in Sudan since 2014, Singhania and his teammate had run out of water and electricity by the fifth day of the internecine conflict. The duo decided to move to his friend’s house across the city.
Singhania recalled encountering two soldiers of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is locked in a power struggle with the country’s army. “Taking a handful of clothes, a bag of food supplies and my laptop, my teammate and I began driving towards our friend’s house. We saw numerous buildings riddled with bullet holes, bodies lying across the city. At a checkpoint, two young soldiers from the RSF stopped us and inspected our car and our whereabouts,” he said.
“Our driver, who knew the local language, let them know we were Indians and had no weapons. Eventually after checking our things, they let us go.”
On the other side of Khartoum, Rai and his wife had converted their homes into bunkers. The couple kept consoling their children, who were scared of the ‘bad guys’ outside their windows.
“We understood the gravity of the situation but remained hopeful. After hearing the news of the death of an Indian, we immediately moved to the first floor of our home and moved our mattresses to a walled room, away from any windows,” Rai told ThePrint.
But living under trembling walls for a week with the constant fear of being hit by a bomb was too much for the family of four.
Rai, who had sheltered four-five families, made the difficult decision to stop waiting for the embassy and make their own arrangements to move out of Khartoum.
While buses were available, most were out of fuel as RSF troops were constantly looting factories and cars across the city and looking to travel undetected using civilian cars, Singhania told ThePrint. Yet, after a long and stressful night of searching, one of Rai’s colleagues managed to find a bus with fuel and began their journey to Port Sudan Sunday morning.
Relieved to be together but also anxious for the dangerous journey ahead, the bus began to move ahead for a 12-hour plus-road journey.
“I could see RSF troops carrying rocket launchers with them as if they were carrying vegetables from the market. Bodies and burning tanks littered the roads,” Rai said.
As the group had multiple encounters with RSF troops, fears of being held hostage grew with each passing hour.
“They came aboard the bus, asked us questions on who we are and where we were headed, checked out seats and luggage for weapons and more. Some of the soldiers even spoke and played with my children, but throughout the interaction I was in terror as the situation could turn for the worse within seconds,” Rai said.
When the bus reached Port Sudan in the night of 23 April, the group realised that they were the first batch of Indians to reach the city amid evacuation efforts being organised.
With shops open and local transport functioning as usual, a false sense of peace enveloped Port Sudan. While the Sudanese military was present, the sounds of shooting and bombardments that many in the group had grown habituated to were missing.
Hotels were packed as other embassies and international agencies such as the United Nations, too, looked to move out of Sudan.
“When we reached the city, INS Sumedha was still 2-3 nautical miles from Port Sudan. Immediately after arriving, we realised the embassy needed volunteers. As I was good with technology, I helped them at the control room,” said Singhania, who stayed at a friend’s place in the city.
On the morning of 25 April, aboard the INS Sumedha, the group left Sudan for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, along with 278 others.
Feeling of safety
Inside the naval vessel, Singhania finally felt he was home again. From lavish meals, including biryani, jalebi and sprout salad to warm beds, the 12-hour journey to Jeddah, surrounded by Indian Navy officials, was much more comfortable than the one to Port Sudan.
Rai recounted his interaction with a naval officer, Brij, who had been serving for 17 years in total and aboard INS Sumedha for the past 6 months.
“We expressed our deepest gratitude and respect for the Navy. Brij told us just how far the officers were willing to go to help evacuate us, asking their seniors to allow them to go to Khartoum to rescue Indians stranded in Sudan,” Rai said.
Eventually, on Tuesday night, INS Sumedha reached Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the evacuees were greeted by Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan, and Saudi and Indian officials.
Reaching Jeddah, the evacuees were housed at the transit facility at the International Indian School Jeddah, where they received mattresses, meals, medical provisions, Wi-Fi and more.
“We did not tell our family that we had moved out of Khartoum and Sudan until we reached Jeddah. We knew with the unreliable internet we would not be able to communicate with them constantly and it would cause further stress back home,” Rai said.
Ultimately, on Wednesday night, aboard a Saudia flight, the first group of 320 Indian nationals landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi.
Anxious faces turned into smiles as families hugged and reunited at Terminal 3. For Rai and Singhania, the last leg of the journey awaited — the road to Ludhiana, Punjab. But this trip was comforting as they knew their homes awaited them.
(Edited by Tony Rai)