I am an NRI and was on holidays in India when demonetization was announced. I had converted €500 at the airport and had around 30 * 1000 rupee notes. Fortunately for me, I was staying at my parents, so money for food / accommodation etc was not a concern. My main bank account in India is an NRE account which meant I couldn't deposit rupees into it. The other NRO account I have had gone dormant. Couple of visits to the bank to reactivate the NRO account, deposit the 30k, and to withdraw funds from my NRE account - first time I got 10k in 10, 50 and 100 rupee notes (which really helped), and second time I could only withdraw 6k (daily limit was 4k, bank guys were being helpful given my situation, 2k in change, rest in 2k notes) and third time I could withdraw 24k (despite the daily limit of 10k and weekly limit of 24k, again, helpful bank folks). Change situation was getting worse as days went by, and I started using my euro credit card for shopping & eating out etc. Once I ran into an issue at a restaurant where I was to pay 400 rupees, but their reader couldn't charge any my cards to work (others India cards worked), so I left them with 2k and they collected change over the day and had 1600 ready for me the next day (again, small town, mutual respect and trust etc). I had to postpone couple of purchases because the businesses didn't take cards and I didn't have the funds to pay them.

Here are the stats https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/5e3414/demonetisation_stats_as_of_nov_18_33006_crore/