Many scenarios had played out in my mind about how I’d return home from my yearlong around-the-world journey that started last July.

I’d have turned 40, a newcomer into mid-life, by the time I got back with Vision 2020 transformed into Mission 2020 in a changed world raring to take on the new decade. Of course, all this after a week of sharing stories, as well as fresh duty- free haul, and libations with friends and family.

Instead, I returned home on March 22, 2020, to what resembled a scene from an end-of-the-world zombie movie — a scenario I hadn’t imagined even in my wildest dreams. Suspicious policemen and medics in hazmat suits kept an eagle eye on me, and every other passenger, in an eerily empty Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport, where I was returning after 242 days of feeding my wanderlust across four continents — my voyage cut short by a global pandemic.

Last July when I boarded an Air India Dreamliner to Madrid with a one-way ticket and valid Schengen, Canada and US visa-powered passport, there was no plan, no itinerary; only a strong wanderlust and a fluid idea: to see the world for a year, understand its people and their way of life, sample culture and spirits, meet old friends, make new ones and hammer into my laptop the book that had been writing itself in my head for two years now.

When I set foot in Madrid, my immediate crisis was how long ought I stay there and where next? A fairly critical issue at that point because after having left behind the drudgery of full-time work in April 2012, I have barely stayed in one place for more than a month at a stretch.

As I met cousins and bumped into friends who were also traveling, my trip sort of plotted its own course from Madrid to Cordoba and Seville in southern Spain and then across the border to the Algarve coast of Portugal and up along the western coastline to Lisbon, Porto, Guimares and Braga, crossing over into northern Spain. I stumbled into Bilbao in the Basque country while the entire city was celebrating the weeklong Aste Nagusia festival, participated in all revelry while also taking in bits of a hungover city. Those were times when matters like where to catch the sunset, where to eat and frowning upon the plummeting levels of fitness after cheerfully wasted days were what made us pause.

I drank wine watching the sun set behind the Eiffel Tower from a rooftop with Parisian and Indian friends sharing stories and wine, rested in Bremen, got inked in Vilnius, kayaked in Copenhagen, had nights with fuzzy memories in the dive bars of New York, tried writing in New Orleans, got restless and made my way to Chile where I and my wanderlust became victims of the anti-government protests, hiked five days to see Machu Picchu, took a road trip to Mexico’s Baja California, camped on the beach with surfers to ring in 2020, climbed the Aztec and Mayan temples in Mexico and Guatemala, sipped rum and fought mosquitoes in Belize, watched Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway in February and welcomed March in Seattle with the new cherry blossoms.

There were rough moments too. I was denied entry into Ecuador because visa rules had changed for Indians in August 2019, was robbed by cops in Tulum (Mexico), lost everything I owned when my backpack was stolen from the airport, and had my brand-new iPhone 11 snatched by a skilful thief on a bike in Bali. None of that affected my wanderlust and after every setback I bounced back even more determined to keep going.

On March 11, WHO declared coronavirus a pandemic. Coronavirus became everyone’s reality. So much has come to pass since that day that most of the previous eight months of travel feel like events from another lifetime. All that I remember are the last two weeks when the world, as we had known it, first started changing.

I was in San Francisco that day and there already were signs of the US’s impending crisis. Most companies had asked their employees, except the very critical ones, to work from home. Schools had started declaring holidays and universities had moved classes online. Business travellers, scared of getting stuck, had started cutting their trips short. My own Korean Air flight to Vietnam was cancelled.

My Indian passport left me very few options. The only viable option was Indonesia because I still wanted to travel. I found a Singapore Airlines connection to Bali for March 14. It was a deserted airport that morning and while I was checking in at San Francisco, President Trump had declared an emergency. When I connected to the free airport WiFi, messages from friends started popping up. They all had one message: “you are getting out at a good time”.

I reached Bali on March 16 via Singapore. I had to hand over a health form and get my temperature checked before the immigration officer let me through.

On my way to the hostel in Canggu, I was slowed down by the never-ending Bali rush hour. There were backpackers and tourists on scooties shuttling between the rice fields of Ubud and beaches of Seminyak, Kuta and Canggu. That end-of-the-world feeling that seemed to have gripped the world had not spread here. Not yet.

The next morning when people gathered around the pool for breakfast, the Germans were talking about travel restrictions while the English were talking about rumours of a lockdown in Indonesia. By lunchtime, the only conversation was how quickly the virus was spreading and how to get back home.

This was no longer an adventure or fun.

Before stepping out for lunch I booked a flight to Calcutta for March 21 on a Thai Airways flight via Bangkok. Nervousness took over completely. When an English lad in the dorm coughed, I slept with my mask on and moved to a private room in a hotel far away the next morning. At restaurants everyone wanted to keep safe distance. No one wanted to contract anything that could potentially stop them from flying.

On March 21, eager to get back to India, which had banned all international flights for a week starting the next day, I reached the airport three-and-a-half hours early. But the check-in queue was so long that it took two hours to drop my bags and get a boarding pass. Instead of frustration, I was surprised to find myself smiling.

Most people on board were getting a connection in Bangkok to go home as news of more and more nations going into a lockdown came in.

During my home quarantine in my 120 sq ft room, I was staying sane by keeping tab on all my friends who were still trying to get back home. Since I had a lot of time, I tried imagining what life and travel in a post-pandemic world would be like. There was not one image where either life or travel looked as familiar as they used to four weeks ago.