Indian businessman Tapan Gadodia has been unable to return to China, where his import-export company is based, since late January, when he left for his native country to escape what was then the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic. Like thousands of other expatriate Indians returning for the Lunar New Year holiday, fleeing the disease – or both – he found himself stranded in his home country in late March, as India closed its borders and China suspended the entry of foreign workers and residents to prevent the pandemic’s spread. Eight months later, the tables have turned. China has largely brought the outbreak under control; it is now India that is recording more daily cases , at up to 80,000, than anywhere else. Indeed, while India has a similar population to China, about 1.3 billion, it has now registered more than 3.6 million cases and over 65,000 deaths, compared to 85,000 cases and just over 4,600 deaths in China. Even so, as China takes further steps towards opening up – sources say about 60 people with diplomatic visas were scheduled to leave Delhi for Shanghai on Wednesday – Gadodia, like many others, is not certain if he wants to return just yet. “A few of my Indian friends in Shanghai lost their parents and could not even attend their funeral,” recalls Gadodia, 50, of compatriots who had chosen to stay in China when the coronavirus first emerged. Now at home at Kolkata, Gadodia is concerned that were he to return to his business – based in Shanghai, where he has lived for around 20 years – he may find himself stranded once more, this time thousands of miles away from an elderly mother in the middle of a pandemic. “I wouldn’t be free to travel back to India at will,” Gadodia says. ‘Chinese in India are terrified’: border stand-off raises spectre of war There are several thousand Indians like Gadodia who, for various reasons, now face a tough decision about whether to return to their old lives in China or forge new ones on home soil. And the coronavirus is not the only issue weighing on their minds. With India and China now locked in a stand-off over their disputed Himalayan border , some are questioning how welcome they would be if they returned. Relations between the countries have been deteriorating since a June 16 clash in the Galwan Valley that claimed the lives of at least 20 Indians and an unconfirmed number of Chinese. Since then India has ramped up diplomatic and economic pressure on its neighbour, banning 59 Chinese apps, including the social media platform TikTok and WeChat , and making Chinese investment in India’s public and private sectors more difficult. It has also forged closer military ties with the United States and Australia and enraged Beijing by increasing its engagement with Taiwan . On Saturday, troops once again clashed, along the Pangong Tso lake, further raising the temperature. Gadodia says he would not base his decision of whether to return on the conflict; he thinks that on the people-to-people level “things are the same as before” and that on the business level trade is at about 70-80 per cent of what it was. Yet he concedes the relationship between the governments is “obviously bad”. Even for those not put off by the border conflict, there are various hurdles for returnees to clear. Indians on Wednesday’s flight will be required to have taken serum antibody detection and nucleic acid tests within five days of boarding and have pre-approval from the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. Privately employed Indians will also need a letter of invitation from the Chinese foreign affairs office. A second nucleic acid test will be done when passengers arrive in Shanghai and anyone found positive will be returned to India on the same flight. Even those who are virus-free will be required to submit to quarantine for two weeks. For the Chinese stranded in India, home has never felt further away The flight is the latest in a series of Vande Bharat Mission repatriation flights organised by the Indian government to repatriate more than 939,000 of its citizens from around the world in the absence of commercial travel. More Indian expatriates are expected to board the plane for the return journey. The first Vande Bharat flight between the countries arrived in Shanghai on June 20 and a second arrived in Guangzhou on August 6. Surender Sharma, 37, a businessman who works for the Indian fertiliser company Coromandel International in Shanghai, was among the 160 or so Indians who returned to China on the August flight. He is looking forward to being reunited with his Chinese wife and their twin daughters and says so far everything has been plain sailing. “The flight was smooth, we landed around 9am Guangzhou time. Alighting was well organised, three rows at a time,” he and his fellow passengers reported, in a detailed joint account documenting their journey. Not everyone has been so lucky. Some workers who returned to India found the old channels of communication they had relied on were lost when India banned the WeChat social media app. WeChat is widely seen as being vital to socialising and doing business in China. While some were able to work remotely, others were made redundant either due to downsizing connected to the coronavirus or because their companies required them to be in the office. “Luckily my husband, who works at a corporate multinational, is employed and earning money, but I am unemployed now,” says one professional who has been unable to return to her home in Shanghai because of Covid-19 restrictions. She is in India with her one-year-old daughter and a Chinese work permit that expires in October while her spouse remains in China. She fears that even if she is able to return, the media frenzy over the border dispute may have changed ordinary Chinese people’s attitudes towards a topic that was not often discussed in the recent past. Meanwhile, the logistics remain daunting. “The way things are going, I don’t see my family reunion before new year,” she says. LONG WAIT Some are concentrating instead on giving meaning to their prolonged stay in India, using the opportunity to spend time with family and doing their best to stay positive. Anna Thomas, 34, an assistant professor at the Anhui Normal University’s School of History and Sociology in Wuhu city, says she has not been asked to return but doesn’t think the border clash is affecting the process. “It is the policies followed by the provincial or local government to prepare for the safe return of their foreign faculty and foreign students,” she says. India scrambles to shore up South Asia influence amid China border dispute She has been in China during previous clashes and sees this time as no different. She says she has even been able to continue using WeChat. For now at least, she is keeping faith that it is just a matter of time before she returns to teaching her course on the society and culture of modern India. For others, uncertainty is the most difficult factor. In particular, families that have been separated for months are feeling the strain. Kusum Brahmaniya has been living at her in-laws’ home in New Delhi with her children since January 21. Her husband returned to China on March 2 to continue working for the battery-maker Svolt in Baoding and she delayed her return. “I’m regretting that decision now,” she says. “Our wait is extending, endlessly.”