Getting home fast when there is an emergency

Everybody living between countries has thought about this call and almost nobody has prepared for it. The preparation takes an afternoon, it never expires, and it is the difference between leaving tomorrow and leaving next week.

**Check your passport now.** Many countries require several months of validity remaining, renewals take time, and finding out on the night is how people lose three days. Check every family member who might travel, not only yourself.

**Know your re-entry position.** Whether you can come back, and on what, depends on your status in the country you live in, and it is the question people forget in the rush. Read it on the Department of Home Affairs pages while nothing is wrong, and write down what applies to you.

**Keep a document folder you can reach from any phone.** Passport, visa or grant notice, the address you are going to, your parents' medical summary, your employer's contact, your insurer. Photographs are fine.

**Have money you can move at once.** A card that works abroad and is not the only one, and some way to pay for a fare before a transfer clears.

Airlines sometimes have a compassionate or bereavement fare, and the conditions vary a great deal. Ask directly, ask what documentation they want, and ask by phone rather than through the website, because the website will not offer it. Do not let it delay you if it is not available: getting there matters more than what it cost.

Tell your employer as early as you can and put it in writing. In Australia there are minimum entitlements to compassionate leave and they apply to casual workers too, in unpaid form. Ask rather than assume.

This is where the arrangements from our guide on arranging care actually pay off. Whoever is nearby needs to be able to act before you land, and that means they need the doctor's number, a key, and permission that was granted before it was urgent rather than during a phone call at 3am.

There is a process, it differs by country, and consular services on both sides publish what they can and cannot do. Smartraveller covers Australians overseas and the Indian Ministry of External Affairs covers consular matters the other way. Neither of them can pay for anything, and both are worth reading once before you need them.

Put the trip in your Roots calendar, even retrospectively. Days in each country drive tax residency and some visa conditions, and an unplanned six weeks is exactly the kind of thing nobody records and everybody is later asked about.