abruptly cancelled Saturday<\/a> following the initial U.S.\u2013Israeli strike on Iran, leaving them with no clear path home.<\/p>\n\u201cWe had nothing, no information at all,\u201d Bhawana said, describing the confusion that followed the cancellation.<\/p>\n
The couple spent hours in airport lineups, trying to rebook flights as tensions in the region escalated. <\/p>\n
They say they received almost no assistance from Canadian officials. While Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday that Canada had begun discussions with the UAE to charter flights for stranded citizens, the Katyayans say they heard nothing after their first call.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot even a follow\u2011up call, email (saying) okay, we are here for your moral support\u2026 we didn\u2019t get anything,\u201d Amogh said.<\/p>\n
By Thursday, the couple had managed to reach Colombo, Sri Lanka, where they spoke about the chaos of their journey and the fear they felt in Dubai, including hearing a loud bang when the U.S. consulate was bombed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t know whether we were going to Colombo, whether we were going to Calgary, whether we would end up in Delhi. We didn\u2019t know anything,\u201d Bhawana said.<\/p>\n
They eventually secured a multi\u2011leg route home, flying through China and Japan before arriving in Calgary on Sunday evening. <\/p>\n
They estimate they paid nearly four times the usual fare but say safety mattered far more than cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I feel like I can breathe,\u201d Bhawana said. \u201cI need not look up, thinking something will fall on us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Calgary couple stranded in Dubai amid escalating conflict in the Middle East has finally secured a way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-517729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}