TWO friends from South East Cornwall have spoken of their fear as they faced being stuck thousands of miles from home – and their relief at making it back to the UK.

Freathy Watson and Ellamae Taylor managed to get onto the last scheduled flight to leave the Indian state of Goa before all air travel in and out of the country was grounded.

Just three weeks previously, Freathy and Ellamae, both 18, had set off on their Gap Year travels with their friends Rosa Littlejohn-Waller and Tanwen Joliff from Manchester. The first destination on their itinerary was the Indian city of Kerala, and from there the girls had taken a train to the backpacker mecca of Goa.

It was not long after settling into their hostel in the northern village of Anjuna that the young women realised a lockdown had been declared in the city they had just left – and that even tighter restrictions were about to be introduced all over the country.

‘On the Sunday we were told we had to do a 24-hour lockdown but then it turned into three weeks. No-one had really planned for it,’ said Freathy, who comes from near Liskeard.

‘All the shops were closed and there was nowhere to get food. People were calling through the gaps in shop windows to get food and then the police would come and shut the shop down, it was scary. But we weren’t worried about running out of food so much as about people turning on us and attacking us.

‘We were really lucky because while all the hostels were closing down, the people that ran ours, an English couple and an Indian lady, let us stay, and they looked after us.’

Rosa describes the climate of fear experienced by Goans and travellers alike as news of COVID-19 and the lockdown to prevent its spread took hold.

‘Within the hostel walls we felt safe. But the scary bit was being on the streets, even before the lockdown. People spat at us and threw stones at us and were shouting coronavirus.

‘Another Cornish traveller, a man from Calstock, was mugged when he went out to get food, he now has a fractured jaw and an infected leg.’

The four friends were in for a very tense few days as they waited to hear if their families had managed to book a flight for them back to the UK.

‘We really didn’t think we were going to be able to get home,’ said Freathy.

‘We didn’t realise how lucky we were until we got to the airport and discovered that ours was actually the last flight.’