By Varun Sanyal, MMA fighter

It was a long flight from India and once I landed in Japan, I thought my trip was done and I would finally catch up with some rest. But it was one crazy day (Thursday). My selection to the team was pretty late and I first flew from London to Mumbai.

From Mumbai, it was a six hour trip to Singapore, five hours layover and then another five hours to Nagoya making it a total of a 16-hour trip for me apart from the London to Mumbai flight.

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There were a lot of social media posts about the chaotic situations athletes were facing, specially related to the allocation of the rooms. First, I thought it was a routine delay but eventually it lasted for hours.

Once I landed in Nagoya, I took the shuttle to the Exhibition center. But the videos were doing rounds on the social media and it was no less than chaotic. The athletes were all over the place in the convention center. Some were lying around, some were sleeping on the floor and others were just waiting.

I arrived and went to register myself by showing my accreditation card, which also serves as my visa but the system didn’t have my name. I was like a total ghost in their system. At first, I thought it was some glitch as I hadn’t seen what was happening around.

Other Indian officials were also waiting with me and we left the facility after three hours. However, my problem wasn’t solved and they asked me to go to the cruise ship where all the athletes are staying.

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It took a 30 minute bus ride to reach the cruise ship. But there was no communication between the exhibition center and the cruise ship and I had to go through the whole process of getting my name registered again.

They started doubting if I had been registered at all. To which, I showed my card and said that the immigration official let me in and that is because I have been registered. I was asked to contact my National Olympic Committee and I did that.

I was asked to go to another facility, which was another 30 minutes away and like the previous two, they also had no idea. Another thing is that none of these facilities had anything to eat. They just gave water bottles and one can’t go out to buy anything.

At the third facility, I saw a Tajik person and a Sri Lankan team stranded in a similar position as me. That is when I realized that it is a widespread problem and everybody is suffering.

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Finally, after running around for more than 10 hours and three different facilities, I got a room to sleep. However, 30 minutes later, two Indian athletes also claimed that the room was assigned to them.

I was like, ‘not again’. Eventually the mess was sorted out and I got to catch up on my much needed sleep.

Another thing to note is that as combat fighters, we have to cut weight and maintain our nutrition in the body. We need to eat something. My body was depleted when I fell down on the bed. I will play the first round on September 20 and lost close to a whole day in sorting out this mess, which was honestly not mine to sort out.

I made a video about it also but I was requested to take it down. The interesting thing is that India would have been a butt of jokes globally had these things happened there. It is really important that the ordeal of our athletes is mentioned.

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Anyway, right now I know all I want is to focus on my weight cut and be ready to represent my country.

Varun Sanyal will represent India in the men’s traditional 77 kg category of MMA at the Asian Games. He spoke to Pritish Raj.