Kolkata-based conservationist returns home from coup-hit Peru

KOLKATA: A city-based conservation practitioner, Ajanta Dey, was stranded at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Machu Picchu in Peru for five days —after getting caught in a coup that led to emergency being declared in the country. Dey, who was in the country to attend a conference on wetlands conservation, trekked through an Andes-Amazonian forest along train tracks to make it to Cusco airport that had just resumed operations and managed to fly out even as the country was being rocked by protests and violence. Sandro, a local guide, helped her trek from the village to Aguas Cilientes.


She reached Kolkata on Wednesday morning after a 48-hour journey via Lima, Miami and Dubai. “I have been in many trying situations but the five days I was stranded in Machu Picchu village with news of airports being vandalised, roads being barricaded and emergency being declared was scary. Alone, with no knowledge of Spanish and low on medicine stock, I was worried,” she said.

On December 4, Dey travelled to Puno in south-eastern Peru, where the Living Lakes Network was organising a five-day conference-cum-workshop on transboundary water issues that are becoming increasingly relevant and critical. After the conference, the delegates had a field visit to Lake Titicaca on the Peru-Bolivia border to study its shared administration. During the conference, she had heard about political developments there. On December 7, President Pedro Castillo tried to dissolve the Congress. Politicians, the court and the Army called it a coup and Castillo was impeached. Vice-president Dina Boluarte was sworn in as the new President and announced a state of emergency for 30 days. But neither Dey, nor the other delegates, realised the gravity of the situation.

After the conference concluded on December 9, most delegates decided to fly out the next day as many of them were down with altitude sickness. Dey, however, decided to do a trip to the 15th century Incan citadel set high in the Andes mountain and got stranded there. On December 14, she returned to the village after climbing the UNESCO site, when she learnt that three airports—Cusco, Juliaca and Arequipa—were forced to shut down.