Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash
I left Pyramid Valley after two days of rest in its serene setting. It was 10:30 in the morning when I left their campus. Tiruvannamalai was 236 kilometres away — about five and a half hours’ drive.
I was refreshed and relaxed and even though I got into peak Bangalore traffic once I was on the highway; it did not bother me much. The road Hosur packed till Hosur, but the traffic eased down after that. The road quality also improved. Driving in Tamil Nadu, especially till Krishnagiri, was a pleasure. The roads were smooth and people drove in a fairly disciplined way.
My first pit-stop was for lunch at Sri Krishna Inn in Shoolagiri. Sri Krishna Inn was a neat restaurant located in one of those mall kind of complexes. The complex also housed a McDonald’s, CCD, a fancy tea shop, and a T-shirt factory outlet, among others. It was one o’clock on a hot afternoon. Maybe that’s why my normal appetite for uttapam did not turn up, so I had a plate of curd rice for a change, followed by filter coffee (which cannot be changed).
Stepping out right under the furious sun after lunch gave me quite a shock. For a moment, I felt like parking my car in the shade and taking a nap. But come rain, hail, snow, or sun — warriors of the road don’t take naps. “Once more to the breach,“ the road called out to me. I grudgingly started the car and drove out of the mall with a slight squint, which I believe persists till today.
About 30 minutes later, I passed Krishnagiri, which is famous for granite quarries. It also has a forest and, I had heard, a wild-life sanctuary too. However, I wasn’t sure about the latter, so I made a mental note to check it. While I was still thinking if there was a wild-life sanctuary anywhere close by, the map lady started crooning.
“Take left,” she instructed me.
But there was no left turn, although I had just passed one about a hundred meters before she spoke up. I wasn’t sure if she meant the left turn, which had already passed, or that a left-turn that would appear soon.
Normally the map lady says, “Take left in x meters,” but this time it was just, “Take left.”
The left turn did not come, and I think the map lady decided in her wise algorithmic brain that she would get me to take the next available u-turn on the highway and put me back on track. She gleefully told me to “continue straight.” After some time, a u-turn did appear and she asked me to turn around. But instead of proceeding on the highway, she directed me to take a slight left onto a deserted service road.
Something did not feel right. The road looked like it hadn’t been used for a long time. To my left was a patch of land densely packed with trees, and to my right was the highway. I’m not sure if what I saw on my left was forest land or just a large patch of dense vegetation. From the car, it felt like forest land.
Just like I suspected, the road had not been used because it did not go anywhere. It soon came to a dead-end with the thick vegetation curving into the lane and blocking it from further access.
“Go straight,” the map lady instructed.
I told her, rather politely, that there was no road ahead. But she wasn’t in the mood to listen to me.
“Go straight. Go straight.” She insisted.
“Dear map lady,” I said, “I need a horse to enter the forest.”
“Go straight. Go straight. Go straight.” Her insistence had turned to a demand. I wondered if the map lady thought we travelled on horses and elephants in India. With the East India Company marching all over the sub-continent, we made a distinct shift towards becoming an industrialized nation, and left whatever vestiges of civilized-close-to-nature living that we had. In the past hundred years, we have gone too far on the road to destruction. It’s a point of no return. Horses, elephants, and travelling in forests is but a distant dream. I didn’t think the map lady’s algorithm would agree with my views on civilized living, and I was too tired to argue, so I took the easy way out and shut the map software. (Recent Update: I got a cycle instead of a horse.)
The place where I had taken the u-turn, a few hundred metres back, had a petrol pump and a garden restaurant. I thought it might be a good time to take a coffee-break, fill fuel, and retrace the route on the highway to the place where I had missed the left.
But first, I sat in the car for some time, enjoying the deserted road and greenery to my left. I also reflected on what I thought was an important lesson. Regardless of how good technology gets, the best backup is and will remain for the foreseeable future, paper and pen. I really should have made a note of all the important places that I would pass and all the places where I needed to take major turns. Well, we learn something new every day.
After relaxing for some time on the unused service road, I had a coffee at the garden restaurant, filled fuel, and set out on the highway retracing my route.
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