I have often gotten lost. My geographic survival instincts have always been poor.

And I never learned left from right. It would have been a delight if the Google Maps lady’s voice said: “Take the turn to your other left.”

I don’t understand the compass either. But being lost has been good for me. I doubt a career in writing would have happened without my getting lost. Here is a list of places in which I have been hopelessly disoriented: London, Singapore, Pondicherry, Udaipur, Mumbai, Delhi, Srilanka, Paris, New York City, Jaipur, Chennai.

 

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The best cup of coffee you’ll find in London is getting brewed in this small, quaint cafe located under a bridge. The best fish curry you’ll ever taste is getting made in this fisherman’s small house located off Serenity Beach in Pondicherry.

If you end up on the wrong side of Sentosa Island in Singapore you might miss the fireworks on New Year’s Eve but you would have made friends of a lifetime because you found yourself seated in the middle of a group of travellers from all over the world, giving me a night to remember.

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But the only way to discover these off-the radar experiences is by getting lost.

Back-track to the summer of 2015, it was another rainy morning in London and I was tired of just sitting at home because of the miserable, cold showers. I decided to wrap myself up in the warmest clothes (yes it was summer in London but I was still freezing), picked up my umbrella, my credit card and a bottle of water and decided to finally get out of my house.

Instead of taking the tube from the ever busy King’s Cross Station, I decided to walk to Bond Street with the help of Google Maps, obviously. But my prepaid package expired which meant I had no internet connection on my phone. Instead of finding the closest store to get my phone number re-charged, I stuffed my phone in my jacket and continued walking.

I had no plan. I did not have any modern navigation device telling me where to go. I just walked and walked in the pouring rain. I don’t know which street I was on but the rain started to pour down a little harder so I had no option but to turn into this tunnel for protection.

A typical dark, scary looking tunnel but I don’t know what encouraged me to continue going deeper and so I did. Just as the tunnel ended, it gave way to the most beautiful hidden lake I had ever seen.

A single boat was docked and not a soul in sight. I sat on the wet gravel floor of the tunnel with the umbrella perked on my head taking in the serenity and calmness of a hidden lake in the center of Central London. I spent two hours just sitting in the cold rain- no coffee, no Wi-Fi, no phone calls.

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Can you be lost, and, at the same time, know exactly where you are?

That’s how I felt when I found myself sitting in front of this rare, hidden, unknown lake. After this experience, ditching the map and taking the road less traveled became my travel mantra. And that’s my favorite way to travel- without expectations and without a destination.

Getting lost is getting harder. The world has been mapped and re-mapped to the extent that we no longer travel to destinations but rather to a set of preset coordinates. Our smartphones and smartwatches are bursting with information.

It is possible to take a walk in London’s Oxford Street, knowing which waffle place is the best, which tube train to get on, which malls to visit and which neighborhood houses famous art galleries. But to stumble upon a rare and out of sight lake in the middle of one of the most famous cities in the world, you need to brace yourself to get lost first.

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