Obviously I sympathize, but I find it extremely odd that OP is complaining about cards being declined but doesn't once explain whether he/she tried phoning their credit card to unblock? Because that generally works -- you call once, let them know you're traveling and where, and then your card works fine. Occasionally you have to call again for a specific high-value ($500+) transaction, but it's rarely more than a 5-minute phone call.

And then as to buying/using gift cards in India, on a non-Indian account, of course that's going to raise every suspicion under the sun, given that that's a mechanism used by some of the most prevalent scams in the world.

So I'm really confused, because this "vent" reads like somebody not going through the basic steps to use credit cards abroad, and then engaging in the biggest red-flag types of transactions.

And the fact that they're complaining the airport doesn't allow them to carry enough cash (isn't the limit $10K?) really raises red flags for me. If you need to transfer large amounts of money safely between countries to your family, that's what wire transfers or Western Union is for. That's been the case for many decades now.

The more I re-read this post, the less and less sense it makes.