In Mumbai you ask one person standing on a best bus stop "Arre mama, sector 29 kaise jana?" He comes near and peeking into your car and says "Nice car..santro hai kya?". Frusturated you ask angrily"Sector 29 ke liye kaise jana batayenge". You get a reply "Gussa kyun hote ho, aap sector 29 mein hi ho".
In bangalore at a junction you wonder which one is mysore road so you ask one fellow "Hey which side is mysore road "He looks at you with straight face and says" I am not sure but you can definitely take the left one".
In Delhi you seek directions to say Karol Bagh from some person near a pan shop. What happens is some two three people idling around pitch in for help too. Each one has a different direction in mind for Karol Bagh. They start quarelling quarelling among themselves on who is right. And you are left perplexed.
Its no different in foreign countries. And I feel that you end up in amusing situations more often there because of varied reasons like not knowing language of land or not finding anyone to seek direction from or you fail to understand GPS or GPS fails to understand you.
You may be prompted to ask "Which tram you take to the musuem?" as you are standing at a tram station in city of Stuttgart and unable to read the map which is in german. A gentleman might inform you very politely that you should take tram U1. Thanking him for his kindness, you board U1, but soon realize the mistake that it is taking you to the musical instead of museum. Lucky you that at that time there was at least someone around to speak with you. But at times in these lands there could be situations when you are lost and there's no soul around. You are entirely dependent on your intution and luck to resolve your way.
You might think that GPS is a precious gift to solve the navigation problems in the alien places. Very true, and I fully agree. GPS is indeed a wonderful gadget, but tit could as well lead to some comic situations. Like it could happen that when you want to go to Santa Cruz in CA, the GPS starts taking you to Santa Cruz in Texas as you wrongly fed Santa Cruz, TX. Now thats blunder (Jana tha japan pahunch gaye chin..) and only because GPS failed to understand you. It could as well happen that you fail to understand GPS. GPS rightly informs you that you need to take the next exit to Mountain View, but there are two roads at exit and in the darkness you take the wrong one. One more mistake in following GPS and you are lost.
Leaving you with a funny picture of yourself, in a situation where there is car with 4 people, you are at the steering, you are in foreign land, you dont have a GPS in car, you have some paper map of region, signs on road are in an unknown language and everyone is yelling at you to follow his directions...
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