Gorakhpur, UP to Raxaul, Bihar:

As we crossed, Gorakhpur city, we witnessed the non-Auto Rickshaws which depicted the existence of the one of the oldest modes of transportation in India. As any other tier 2 cities in india, Gorakhpur was flooded with 2 wheelers. Atleast 1 in 5 bikes had gas cylinders tied to the rear seat. Now don’t assume that Gorakhpur has Gas powered 2 wheelers, it is only that the gas cylinders are transported. Unlike, the gas cylinder delivery that happens in the South India, Gorakhpur people had to pick their cylinders from the agency because most of the houses don’t have detailed addresses for the delivery man to deliver the gas cylinders. 2 out of 5 bikes was carrying an entire family, another typical tier 2 city middle class mode of transportation. Now that we had reached the interiors of UP, the response from the bike riders had slightly changed from MP, only that they did not respond to any horn. The loud horn of my vehicle only created the Noise pollution but the real intent of the honking was not met.

We were driving into Bihar through the NH27 and were following the Google maps since it always guided us through the route with shortest time to reach. As we were inside Bihar, the Google maps pushed us to take a diversion into an internal road. As we took the road diverting from the NH27, few meters ahead the road got narrow but well tarred running between fertile agricultural lands.

We did not realize that we had lost until we reached a point where a few meters ahead was a Pond but google was still showing a road. My vehicle was not a Hovercraft and hence we could not swim across the pond to reach the other side, the option was only to take the right side road to ensure that we are in the right direction.

After few seconds, Google maps rerouted with a new route now showing that we are in the correct way. After few minutes driving ahead, still following google maps, we entered a small-unpaved street. As we still believed and moved ahead in the road, we entered a gate of a house, which had few goats and buffaloes. We managed to turn around within the same place without anyone noticing us and as we turned around the SUV, the goats got panicky. We did not have any intentions of picking the Goats J

We did realize that Bihar village roads were not recorded appropriately in Google, that means someone has just drawn roads on paper and waited for some driver to experiment. We were victims of this Google experiment and decided to forget the directions provided by Google and decided to drive in the direction of the NH27. How did we know the direction of NH27 ? Google maps showed us the direction in which we were moving and the direction of NH27. It was like we were driving off road for Google. After few enquiries (thanks to my Hindi skills), we escaped few roadside thorns and finally reached the Highway and decided to stay on the Highway whatever time it takes.