The Story Of Ravi Patel

Ravi And I

You meet a lot of characters when you travel, and most of them have a lot of amazing stories. Thats one thing I love about traveling the world, Just meeting new people and listening to their stories. Ravi Patel was one such character.

Ravi had lived in The Secret Garden about 3 months when I arrived. He was from India, but spoke perfect English as well as fluent Spanish. He had been traveling a while, but was here in Quito working on The Secret Garden´s computer system. He worked all through the night, but you would see him around in the day, chatting to pretty much everyone and going out on the town, when a group of us were going on the occassional (or not so occassional) night out. He looked like he should be 32 but was actually just 21 years old. We became pretty good friends.

Anna and I left Montañita a day before Ravi because we had to be in work the following day. When I returned from my volcano monitoring on that Monday after New Years, there was a note waiting for me in the hostal. It read..........

"Alex, it´s Ravi. I am in jail. I need $650 to get out. Will you email my mother in India to wire over the money. Please quote the song "You Are My Sunshine" so she knows it´s not someone trying to scam her. Ravi".

The note also had some other details, like the name of some Ecuadorian guy who we had to get the money to. I couldn´t believe it.

The next two days were hectic. I was on the phone to lawyers, speaking to Ravi now and again, when he would call from jail, and trying to get his money together. One guy in the hostal knew an Ecuadorian politician so we were getting him to help us too. The whole hostal was involved - making calls and running around like loonies trying to get this man free, but I was put in charge of operations.

The reason Ravi was put in jail was because on his bus back from Montañita, the Police made a random bus check, looking at everyones passports. Ravi didn´t have his with him, but they could check his details from his driving lisence - thats when the problems started. If I want to go to Colombia, or another South American country, then generally, I can just head to the border and get a stamp for three months. But if your from India, like Ravi, getting a visa isn´t so easy. He had been trying to get his visa for Colombia for a month or so with no luck, and in the meantime his visa for Ecuador had expired. When the Police checked his details, his visa had been invalid for two weeks and so was put in Santo Domingo Prison.

In the end, we managed to get him the cash without conatcting his mum. The Secret Garden owed him some money and another long term traveler put in the rest. We then had to wire his lawyer the cash through Western Union - the whole thing was a major drama. Most of the money was for the lawyer fees. A few days later Ravi turned up at the hostal a free man. He told us the bizarre story of living in an Ecuadorian prison - not a great experience. Aparently he had to pay for everything, his bed, his food, telephone calls. Ravi is the kind of guy who doesn´t travel with too much cash on him, I think he had about $10 when he went in. He thus had to sell his t-shirt to pay for a telephone call. On his second night, some of the prisoners tried to escape, making a hole through a bathroom wall. Ravi told me the place was so delapidated that if six people ran at the wall it would definately come down.

Ravi paid the fees but was given just a couple of weeks to get his stuff together and leave the country. Before he left, it was his birthday - he was 22. Loads of us went out to celebrate. Twelve days later he took a flight to Puerto Rico where he had an uncle living and so could easily get a visa.

I have since found out that a Policeman can take you to the station even for not having some form of identification on you at all times. Since that day, I always carry a copy of my passport with me. I never did email his mum, to this day she still doesn´t know her son went to jail - I hope she never reads this. I don´t know if I will ever see Ravi again......but never say never.