Would we have gotten lost without Google maps?

In the past month we have driven about 2500 kilometers through six states (New Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka) on all types of roads – national highways, state highways, village roads, city roads and non-existent roads.

Navigation has been made significantly easier by Google maps and mapmyindia. For us, the little pre-planning for the trip was possible only because of Google maps. This tool gave us a lot of courage that other than asking the next person walking on the road, finding our way would be not so difficult most of the times and allowed us to make plans. That said,  the charm of getting lost is lost in this age of Google maps. So whenever we hear the hopeless declaration 'GPS Signal Lost', we know that we are going to end up on something unexpected - which is not always a bad thing. We ended up on the other side of the grand Gokak falls that had an amazing view of the entire fall and the valley ahead. Using our all knowing GPS maps, we drove to Gokak falls, and at the time that both of us thought that maybe we have been led astray since we seemed to be driving through fields and villages without any sign for a fall, we suddenly found ourselves looking at the fall at a deadend-except that we were on the side of the village rather than the side where the Gokak mill and parking area is. It made for a spectacular view that we may have otherwise missed. There is a joy in getting lost indeed.

There is a sense of comfort in having this crutch especially given the dearth of signage on most roads. It was inconsistent, even on some national highway, that we found key signage for bypasses, intersections, and roads into cities. There have been many turns that we would have surely missed if it wasn’t for Google maps.  For those seeking an adventure, it may not be undesirable to miss a turn but for those who are trying to get from City A to city B, these missing signposts may turn out to be a lost half hour or many kilometers lost. So far, we havn’t been completely lost, between Google maps and common sense (once it tried to send us over a wall) we have kind of managed to figure out our way even though sometimes it may be a much longer way or a road barely wide enough for our car to pass.

In India, most often we are able to find someone to ask directions from so getting lost may not be the worst thing. But the lack of signs can affect us in more ways than just making us clueless or lost. Road signs also alert the driver about an intersection, a diversion, or simply a indicate a speed breaker. These vital signs were missing on most highways except a couple of the main NHAI (golden quadrilateral) highways. When we think of road safety in India, we often associate it with reckless driving. But improved road signs may be a simple way to at least alert cautious drivers about possible road blocks or turns or more simply, just provide us signposts regarding our destination.

Bypassing the 'Crowded and Unattractive'

Another thing we talked about in our journey were the bypasses. We took bypasses to many cities on our way including Chittorgarh, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Bharuch, Bombay and others.

I told Yutika that bypasses must feel an unjust and unfair thing to the city and city wouldn’t be very happy with them. I felt sad especially bypassing Chittor as I wanted to see the victory pillar that I grew up seeing in my general knowledge and history books. We had bypassed the city (and the pillar) even before we knew it. She had a point that it is efficient, as we don’t have to get stuck in the traffic. I agreed to that part as I prefer taking Meerut and Muzaffarnagar bypasses when I travel home.

However if cities didn’t have much traffic then one wouldn’t have to make the bypasses and then make others take the bypasses.  One could then go through the city instead of bypassing it.

In past 14 years, I have travelled between Delhi and Rishikesh hundreds of times by road. Once the bypass came up around 7 kilometers before Rishikesh, people started taking it to arrive at the extreme north west end bypassing the whole of Rishikesh town (which the Lonely Planet describes as crowded unattractive downtown area). And I always got very sad every time the vehicle I was in, either the roadways bus or a car I was traveling in, took the bypass. My sadness stemmed from the fact that I grew up going to a school in the cantonment area of Raiwala town which was 12 kms away from home and everyday I passed in and out of the then not-so-crowded and not too unattractive a town. The road and the city on its sides were part of almost 10 years of my life.  So whenever I traveled towards Rishikesh, I used to close my eyes when my vehicle went past my school. I played the game of identifying the point I was crossing based on the turns or the sounds and my judgment. I was justified in feeling sad, as I couldn’t play this game anymore, for more than 50% of my journey between my school and home. But I can imagine others being happy due to the time-savings and this is how it is.

Perhaps those who consider a city’s core as crowded and unattractive might feel the same of an old human heart too. Thus I wonder if the timing of a human heart bypass has any similarities with the bypassing of a city’s heart and if the bypass is a life-saving operation in both cases at a particular age in each one’s life. It however might be harsh on the cities as they are born with a blessing of wishful death, which they themselves can never ask for and will never be allowed to wish for.

Travel-Absolute or Relative?

The journey during the test run along with our stays, brief and elaborate both, made us think and reflect on a lot of things, which we otherwise never do.

Driving between two destinations, distance is always absolute and thus more you move forward, more is the distance that gets covered. Yutika said that this is one of the best things about driving between two destinations is that more you do it, more it gets done unambiguously and you are bound to reach your destination and 'finish the task'. This is in contrast to a lot of other work that we do which seems to always increase the more we do it e.g. writing reports!

Anyway, while driving on a highway, default belief or hope with which I was driving was that I could keep overtaking. But as the navigator in the left seat said, there are times when one has no option but to just wait. It can be on the turns that are too blind to take a risk, or on a single lane highway where the view on either side of the leading vehicle doesn’t inspire overtaking confidence. And then you drive on, sometimes for a kilometer without overtaking. This reality of highways seemed to have much more meaning to it. Perhaps each one of you can make your own meanings. I think this also has something to do with the way one considers travel as an absolute or relative. So if the travel and distances are not absolute, no matter how much you travel, you won't reach the destination. Then overtaking might not be so much fun. It only gives a perspective to your journey as you can compare it with that of someone else's.

I am doing such intense highway driving for the first time in my life and thus other than the mindless thinking, I also got the most important lesson of highway driving-that truck drivers are the best drivers on the highways and you can trust them more than anyone else on the road. Yutika asked me to think of a truck as a moving wall on the highway. In the beginning I used to be dead scared to come near a truck but by the end of our test run, I am scared of cars more than anything and feel happy overtaking even between two moving walls.