It was around 7:00 PM, and we had convened from different flights at the Delhi airport (on our way to Nainital, Binsar and other destinations in Uttarakhand), and ready to depart to the Delhi Sarai Rohilla railway station (which I was told was just 45 minutes from the airport). With that complacency, we finally departed at 7:45 PM, and how wrong we were!
The roads were wide, and looked the kind that could beat all traffic, but that was not to be! The Innova inched ahead in the inundated traffic, and I’m not exaggerating. Just when we realized we were running late, and would have to move out of the vehicle and run towards the station (in a Dilwale Dulhaniya…) sequence, one of our co-travelers had the good sense of stepping out of the vehicle and asking a guy on scooter if the station was around the corner.
Fortunately the guy sensed our predicament and asked us to follow him through a detour (he said there was no way we would make up in time if we were stuck in our current situation). We followed him through the bylanes of Delhi, and reached the station with a few minutes to spare (which came in handy because we could quickly parcel our dinner from a Dhaba).
Now we all know the convenience of technology, Google maps et al – but nothing can quite replace the human intuition, and local knowledge of a place. Makes our journey, all the more interesting and leaves me something to write about!
