Round and round

What’s the first thing, that comes to your mind upon reading this headline?

Is it someone going around in circles in a ferris wheel? Nah….

Then if you think it’s the story of someone playing that game of going round and round, that we used to play in childhood, then you would also be mistaken.

What if, it’s the story of someone making circles of a place, while searching for it on Google maps! Not something, one would think at the first instance, right? Well the story is about that. So stick with me till the end to find out what it’s all about .

So, the story goes like this…

First, a little background. In spite of staying in Bhubaneswar for around a decade, sometimes I can’t help, but feel I scarcely know the place.That’s strange you would think, well not really! For a better part of it, I wasn’t even there (was pursuing Engineering from a different place), only seen around the house in semi annual vacations from college. Also, the place we used to stay earlier, was on the outskirts of the city(we came to the Bhubaneswar, when I was in 8th standard) and took a lot of time to go anywhere. Add to that the pressure of high school, then college, coaching and JEE and there wasn’t simply enough time. Then came college, and all the TV series and movies that came downloaded from hostel for the holidays, needed to be watched and that ensured, I stayed inside home for the most part of it and thus it is in the last year or two, that I’ve really started going out, and the fact that we moved to a new place towards the end of last year, that was in the city, pretty much helped!

So, how does a person, who doesn’t know any roads apart from the one from school or college to home, goes about traveling anywhere in a city as vast as Bhubaneswar? Google Maps obviously… . So after some trips here and there, during which, I used to stop at some square(chowk) or the other enroute the destination, to check for the route on Google Maps or ask my companion(if any) to guide me from behind(left or right) using Maps, finally I found a full proof way to travel with the help of Maps in a two wheeler. The setup goes like this, first set the destination with Google Maps on the mobile phone for turn by turn navigation, then plugin the earphones, the mobile goes inside the pocket, helmet on and you’re ready to go. This worked well( most of the time ;-) ), but when it doesn’t, you’re up for a long voyage and that’s what this story is all about.

So here comes the main part, interested ? Well I am, to tell you 😂!

There was this time, when I was planning to go to a mall and sometime back put my mobile on battery saver mode, because then my old mobile battery was draining pretty fast. In a bid to save as much battery as possible, so that I don’t have to ask the route to home, from one guy or the other, I didn’t turn off the battery saver mode. All the while enroute, frequent notifications from the application “GPS signal lost” wasn’t paid heed to after checking the phone once or twice midway. So, when it became obvious after much time that I wasn’t anywhere near the place I was supposed to be, I stopped my scooter and did a thorough check of my mobile phone and that’s when Battery Saver mode was found the culprit after narrowing down all the suspects, but then around 5 Kms had already passed!

Major roads, flyovers and popular chowks are most well marked on Google maps, not so for the small places. They’re often off by a block or two or so marked that, there is no specific road to the place on Google Maps and hence the algorithm tries to move you round and round until you find the place tucked around in a corner , or not at all. Another little tale from about the same time period goes like this….

This time, I went for the planetarium in the city. Last time, I was there, I was a little child, who came with his parents to see the zoo and all such major places in the capital. So to refresh all these memories and at the insistence of my sister(she was in high school then), off I went armed with my navigation tools. The planetarium was situated in the corner of a very well known chowk in the city(I didn’t know that yet). When we reached the chowk and took the correct turn, the application told us to move forward and so we did. After 15 mins. or so and at least 3 rounds of that exact place, we stopped at that point and asked an autowallah, who was around and when he pointed his fingers to the corner, boy weren’t we embarrassed !

Then there was another time, when the destination set on Google Maps was right in front of my eye, but involved taking a wee bit of wrong route, but relying on Google, I decided to become Raja Harischandra and finally reached the place after 3 kms of detour, all the way hearing an earful from mom, who was my pillion rider that day.

Then there was another time, that me and my friend decided to go to Ram mandir, a famous temple in Bhubaneswar, well not for the temple itself, but for the food street that was around the corner. But for reasons best known to Google itself, upon searching for the place on it, the only result that comes up is another Ram mandir, that’s near Khandagiri. Interestingly both the place have similar architecture and upon seeing the only search result and the look-alike thumbnail, I set my destination to the place without giving it a second thought. Although we had our fair share of doubts about the route on the way, we trusted Google blindly and moved on, but when it became pretty clear that, we have come a long way from our intended destination, tell me about disappointment, huh! As it was getting pretty late then, we had to scrap the plan and finally had some pizza at Domino’s on the way home.

Have you ever had any similar experience with Google Maps? Tell me in the comment section!

Finally many thanks to Gapu bhai and Manas Sir for providing me with the impetus to write this blog. It was something, which was long pending!