Ex-Rangers star and 9 in a row hero David Robertson is stranded in rural India amid a countrywide lockdown due to the global pandemic.
The former Aberdeen left-back manages Real Kashmir and revealed that the situation in India has resulted in him being grounded 12 hours drive from the nearest city.
Stranded with wife Kim and son Mason, who plays for the Indian Super League side, David spoke about the challenge of being in south-east Asia for the duration of a 21-day state-ordered lockdown.
“It’s a scary time in the world and our family being split apart makes it even more difficult,” said Robertson [BBC Scotland].
“It’s hard being away from home, particularly being parents. We’ve got one child here but another two in Scotland and we want to all be together.
“My daughter is at home and my son was in Mexico, but he was lucky to get one of the last flights out of there and got home a day or so ago.
“Both my wife’s parents and my parents are also in Aberdeen, and they’re obviously elderly, so there is a concern being so far away.”
India’s ginormous population of almost 1.5bn were ordered into lockdown by Prime Minister Narendra Modi shortly after grounding all domestic and international flights.
This has left David and his family 4000 miles from home with genuine fears over when they will be able to get out of the country.
In the interview with the BBC, Robertson revealed that he was staying in a hotel belonging to the owner of Real Kashmir.
But the former Ibrox full-back has fears that food will begin to dry up in the hotel with the nearest city 12 hours drive away in perilous conditions.
“Srinagar Airport is now closed, so the only way to get in is a single-track road most of the way from Delhi, which takes 12 hours,” said Robertson.
“It is like the side of a cliff, there’s no barriers, it’s quite dangerous. I’ve done that road once before and I swore I would never do it again.
“Now with the total lockdown, no-one will be able to leave the hotel to get food. So eventually I’d imagine the food will dry up at some point.
“Thankfully there’s only a handful of us left. A lot of the Indian players have gone home. But I think it’s just being in a strange place, a foreign country miles from home and sort of shut off from the rest of India, which is quite worrying.”
Robertson is in his third campaign as the manager of Real Kashmir, with his experiences within Kashmir’s militarised zone documented by a famous BBC documentary [BBC].
David, 51, earned promotion to the India’s top-flight in his first season in charge and was on track to achieve a third-place finish in the Indian Super League for the second season in a row.
