A mission to return hundreds of stranded British travellers from India was almost thwarted when a rescue car broke down in the middle of a tiger reserve.
More than 260 passengers had been stuck in Southern India for four weeks after flight options ceased because of the coronavirus outbreak.
A Foreign Office team of five drove 12 hours from Bangalore to Cochin, while another team embarked on a 13-hour journey from Chennai to Trivandrum, to help them board a charter flight home on April 15.
But on a twisty and notoriously rough Western Ghats mountain road on the way from Bangalore, one of the rescue teams picked up a puncture in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
The road also runs through the middle of an elephant migration corridor, and the group encountered a female elephant during the ordeal.
With the team standing lookout, the deputy high commissioner, Jeremy Pilmore-Bedford, raced to change the tyre in the heat and humidity of the tropical forest.
“The breakdown was definitely a low point in our journey,” said Mr Pilmore-Bedford. “But we had so many people counting on us, we couldn’t end up as a tiger’s tiffin.
“Changing tyres isn’t your average diplomatic activity, but there was nothing we weren’t prepared to do to get our people home.”
Meanwhile, a group of 42 students and teachers from an international school, stranded in the same region, negotiated a tough eight-hour journey across state borders.
An FCO staff member drove 36 hours and 2,000km from Chennai to Kerala to hand-deliver an emergency travel document allowing them to fly.
Protocol assistant at the deputy high commission in Chennai, Rajesh Bhaskaran – who made the journey, said: “Though the journey was arduous and riddled with multiple police checkpoints, at the end it was a hugely satisfying experience to help stranded British nationals from remote parts of southern India fly back home safely.
“But almost zero traffic during the lockdown made me feel like a ‘king of the road’ to deliver emergency travel documents in the nick of time.”
A further three charter flights managed to get around 400 British travellers home.
Eight-year-old Mayzia Richardson, from Derby, who was among the travellers, sang A Million Dreams from hit film the Greatest Showman at the check-in desk when she arrived back in the UK.
