On our trip to Mussoorie, my friends and I arrived at around 6 PM. It was raining heavily. We searched for a stay at every possible website, calling every possible contact but the luck was not in our favor. Suddenly, one of my friends called an owner of a property, and he said, “yes, the rooms are available.” The place was called ‘The Haven’ and, coincidentally, we were standing next to it. However, the owner told us that some cleaning work was going on and, hence, it would take another hour to be ready. We were happy to find a stay for us that night. Since we had an hour, we thought we would have our dinner and could later head to our hotel.
It was already 9 PM by the time we finished our dinner. We called up the owner and informed him that we would get late by an hour more as we had just finished our dinner. We started heading to our stay in the dark while playing music in the car. Google maps was on all the time, and it showed us around 50 mins. We went downhill, and, after about 20 mins, the network went away - a usual thing in the mountains. We were sure that the path to our stay was straight, so we continued. It was all dark with no street light, and we could see no one on the road. After around 30 mins, we stopped our vehicle to see if we were on the right path. But unfortunately, the stay was on a completely different route. Google Maps rerouted and showed us the way. We took a U-turn and started again.
After a while, maps showed us to take a right turn. It was a narrow rubbled road, which became steeper and steeper as we went ahead. After a while, we hit a dead-end, and hence we had no choice but to take a U-turn. The car was weak as it was not able to climb uphill. The road had small pieces of rock fired like a bullet off the tire whenever we tried to accelerate. Somehow, we managed to get the car out of that road and went to the nearest stay. Fortunately, we came across a hotel called ‘Casino,’ which had some vacancies. We spent the night there.
The following day, we woke up refreshed. We saw the news that Google Maps had stopped working last night around 9 PM in many countries. India was one of them. We were shocked to read that news. Maybe we went through all that trouble because of it that night. We were happy that everyone was safe.
After two days, when we were returning from Mussoorie, our car brakes failed. We had to stop the car using the handbrakes. The vehicle skidded slightly, but there was no damage. We asked around for some help. Finally, we got in touch with a nearby mechanic. The mechanic came in his bike, and we asked him to drive the car to the workshop as it had no brake. He drove the car and took us to the workshop. After getting out of the car, we were shocked as we found ourselves standing right next to ‘The Haven,’ the stay from where it all began.
