I Asked Google Maps for an Adventure. It Gave Me a Highway.

If you’re wondering why I am arguing with a navigation app, the answer is my bike and I were trying to plan a bike trip from Mukteshwar back to Delhi, and I was begging to stop being such a spoilsport.

A little backstory …

On my way up to Mukteshwar, I’d taken the conventional route that Google suggested: Delhi-Gajraula-Moradabad-Rudrapur-Haldwani-Bhimtal-Bhowali-Mukteshwar. By the time I reached the hills, I was exhausted, and not because I’d driven nearly 400 kilometres. It was because I’d driven a third of that distance through the most boring highway that had ever highed its way!

I dislike straight, boring highways that lack any personality or ooomph! A lot of people look at them and think, ‘Yay! Fuel efficiency.’ I think, ‘Snooze fest!’

Give me a road with a little character. One that bends when it doesn’t strictly need to, climbs when it could quite easily remain flat, and takes me somewhere I wasn’t expecting to go. I want to feel like I’m riding, not merely making forward progress. A perfectly straight highway might be a triumph of civil engineering, but for me, it’s more ‘transportation’ than a bike ride.

At some point during this road trip, the landscape started to feel like a screensaver. Except even screensavers refresh themselves. This highway seemed to have decided that static display was enough for me. Tarmac. Tarmac. Oh look, a withered tree. More tarmac. A truck. More tarmac. Another truck. More tarmac. Occasionally a divider. Truck. Divider. Some fields. More road. Another truck, because consistency is important.

By hour two, I had started turning number plates into algebra equations. By the fifth, I was considering a small but sustainable career as a roadside tree counter. By the sixth, I was inventing backstories for random people in cars and had become emotionally invested in their lives. And by hour seven, I had begun to understand why people in old films dramatically abandoned their cars and walked into the wilderness.

This is the slightly unfortunate part about taking a road trip into the mountains, especially on a motorbike. You spend hours riding through the plains to get to the interesting bit, only to discover that you’ve used up most of the daylight staring at trucks and license plate numbers. And now you’re too tired to properly appreciate the beauty you were dying to see 3 hours ago! Trust me, by the time I reached the hills, I had had quite enough of responsible transportation.

Something had to change …

For the return journey, I decided I wanted to shake things up and do something different. Not necessarily faster. Not necessarily shorter. I wanted a route that actually felt like a reason to be on a motorcycle. This is where Google Maps and I began to have philosophical differences.

Google Maps is a practical lady. She has all the hallmarks of a very sensible aunt coded into her algorithm. She tut-tuts at adventure, and pshaws at any romantic notions of what a good bike ride should be like. She also has unshakeable ideas on efficiency when you’re on a road trip. You say, “I want to ride through the mountains.” She hears, “I require a comprehensive risk assessment and the most administratively efficient way of getting from A to B.” She activates what appears to be a DEFCON-level contingency plan involving travel time, fuel consumption, road quality, traffic density, elevation gain, pothole frequency and, for all I know, sediment samples from the roadside.

I tried to explain that none of this was really the point of a bike ride. I don’t need the road to be perfect. I don’t even particularly need it to be fast. I just want it to feel like I’m actually somewhere, rather than spending six-seven hours travelling through a very long piece of infrastructure.

Give me roads that climb and drop. A field that opens up around a bend. A village the cartographers forgot to put on the map. A stretch of forest. Perhaps a path made by three goats and a tractor, with a cow who has assumed responsibility for traffic management. I want the route to give me something to look at, something to wonder about, and occasionally, something that makes me question whether I’ve made a terrible navigational decision.

Google Maps listens to all of this with the patience of someone who has dealt with difficult people before. Then quietly puts me back on the highway.

So, I fought back. For my return from Mukteshwar, I decided I wasn’t going to let Google Maps make all the decisions. Instead of giving her considerable administrative authority, I broke the ride back into chunks. Mukteshwar to Kaladhungi. Kaladhungi to Ramnagar. Ramnagar to Kashipur. Kashipur to Thakurdwara.

And it worked!

I say this with some surprise because, after all the insisting Google Maps had been doing, I half expected her to materialise somewhere in the mountains, confiscate my phone, take charge of my bike, and relegate me to the pillion seat. I could almost imagine her adjusting the mirrors, checking the fuel gauge, and telling me we’d be there 47 minutes earlier if I just stopped enjoying myself.

The ride back was spectacular! I drove above the clouds, below the clouds, and through the clouds. I drove past intimidating cliffs and cheerful rivers. Mountains gave way to the woods, which then opened out into fields. The landscape kept changing, and the road demanded that I stay alert and involved. I wasn’t an automaton with two wheels, following instructions and mechanically processing kilometres until someone announced, “You have arrived.” Every bend demanded attention. Every change in the landscape pulled me in. Every unexpected turn made me curious about what came next. The focus wasn’t on getting somewhere. It was in being somewhere.

Were all the roads in pristine condition? Absolutely not. Some stretches were clearly going through some existential crises. There were rough patches, loose gravel, and the occasional dark hole masquerading as a crater – waiting to pull you in with open arms and a grin.

Then there were the potholes. Big ones, small ones, and those in between! And it wasn’t just a few, either. You’d get past one, there’d be another one waiting approximately four metres ahead. Then another. Then another. They were materialising so fast it felt like they were actively reproducing to take over the planet. It became less a matter of avoiding potholes and more about choosing which one would do the least damage.

But, as absurd as it sounds, I was happy. One minute I was cursing at a pothole, the next I was laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the road. I was braking hard to avoid an oncoming vehicle, then giggling five seconds later because I’d somehow squeezed through a gap that looked about two inches wider than my handlebars. There were moments of frustration, moments of mild panic, and several moments where my survival instincts appeared to be doing unpaid overtime. But there was never a dull moment.

My shoulders may disagree with this assessment. My rotator cuffs probably have legal representation by now. But I would go through any number of ride-related injuries if they came with the promise of one adventure after another.

Which brings me to my modest proposal: Google Maps needs an “Adventure Mode”. Not “Scenic Route”. That sounds like Google will take you past a lake, point out exactly one attractive tree, and then immediately put you back on the highway. I mean a proper Adventure Mode. A button that says: “Throw Sensibility to the Wind”.

She: “Are you sure?”
Me: Yes.
She: The route may take longer.
Me: I understand.
She: The roads may be terrible.
Me: That’s okay.
She: Fuel efficiency may be poor.
Me: I have a motorcycle.
She: There may be cows and goats.
Me: That’s the point.
She: (Sighs, recalculates.) Fine. Let’s find you a road.
Me: You mean, let’s go on an adventure?
She: (Grudgingly) Yes, let’s go.

(Disclaimer: The featured image is AI-generated. The rest of the images in the blog are from my photo gallery and one has been taken from Unsplash and due credit to photographer has been given)