The Wrong Turn

My riding companions have learned to expect the wrong turn. I've taken many. Straight when the road wanted a left, left when it wanted straight. I've never much minded, but I'm sure my buddies are a bit frustrated.

My travels began with paper maps across Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan. You read the land differently when the map doesn't update. You stop and ask. You read faces to understand if the road ahead is passable, if the rain has been heavy, or if there's somewhere worth stopping. A different kind of information moves between people when neither of you has a screen as a crutch. You notice things. The angle of light on a field. A name on a milestone you weren't looking for.

Somewhere along the way, Google Maps crept in, the first layer of fencing. Then fuel stations near me, restaurants near me, attractions near me, another layer, and another. The restaurant already had a name, reviews, photographs, a menu, the best time to visit, and directions. Asking someone became optional.

Some places resist that fencing anyway. Early this month, I went on a motorcycle ride with a bunch of friends to the Konkan coast, a place that had already given me more than enough reasons to love it. I was there in December last year, working on a story about climate change and the changing taste of our food, riding a hired scooter out to meet farmers and fisherfolk and to see the geoglyphs. I had always wanted to come back on my motorcycle and give myself over to the twisties of the ghats and the straights of the coastal road. And I did.

Three days into our ride, we set out for a homestay in Gaganbawda. After almost a full day's riding, we took the turn we thought led to the homestay. It didn't. We looked around and asked people, and no one knew the name of the place. As we waited and worked out our next move, we noticed a clear stream running under the bridge we were standing on. We were caught between a stream asking us to slow down and a setting sun reminding us of the journey still ahead. Nature was telling us two different things at once. We obeyed the sun.

We figured out the actual route eventually, more by feel, asking around, and the omnipresent Google Maps. We were a little over an hour away. And then came the climb, which turned out to be the best part of the entire ride. Fog rolling in low over the road. A little rain, just enough to change the smell of everything. The Western Ghats opened up ahead of us, massive and half hidden, the kind of scale that makes conversation over the intercom feel beside the point. That climb was the whole reason to be on a bike rather than anywhere else. You don't get handed a moment like that by a route that already knows where it's going.

I have been on journeys where I didn't know where the road went and didn't need to. Following roads with no declared destination, things opened up. Landscapes that don't appear on any list. A man on a bicycle delivering milk. A kid running to a store. A man strolling past a peepal tree. A crow sitting on the back of a cow, looking around, much like I was.

I've met people along these roads who live by very different ideas of what life should be. Somewhere on an earlier trip, I stopped to photograph a family I had no reason to meet. A long conversation over tea, and an entire household became part of my life. None of that was on a map. None of it could have been.

The bridge and the climb into Gaganbawda were a small version of the same thing. We hadn't planned to stop at that stream. We definitely hadn't planned the fog or the road that carried us into it. But that's usually where the ride actually begins, right after the plan stops being useful.

A wrong turn opens something. You can't plan for it. That's the point. Every gadget promising to keep you from getting lost is really just promising to keep the road exactly the size you already expected it to be. I'd rather find the bridge, the fog, and the mountain that wasn't on the itinerary, and let the ride be as large as the day decides to make it.