This incident took place in July last year, but it is as fresh in my memory as if it happened yesterday.

It was our second day in Washington D.C, the United States, as students. My friend and I decided to go out alone to see the White House. We were strangers in a foreign land, all on our own with not the slightest clue of the map of the city we were in. So the only option for us was to take help from Google Maps. We had not imagined it would turn out to be the craziest idea ever.

Anyway, we located our destination on Google Maps, zoomed in and out of the map again and again to get a clear idea about how to navigate the place. I must admit I didn’t trust Google Maps at the time, but my friend was pretty confident. We decided to move ahead after having lunch in a cafe.

We roamed here and there for about half an hour without any success, and then my friend decided to do an internet search. She found a step-by-step set of instructions which would supposedly guide us to the White House, and so we decided to follow these instructions.

We walked and walked, happy with the thought that the instructions were leading us somewhere until we reached a junction where we had to stop. We didn’t know which step to take next and the instructions seemed to have betrayed us, leaving us standing clueless in a busy and bustling place.

We stopped a passer-by, briefly explained to her what we were up to and showed her the set of instructions we were following.

“These instructions are for drivers, not pedestrians,” she said with a smile. When this realisation dawned upon us, we felt embarrassed and completely stupid about ourselves.

Asking passer-bys here and there, taking multiple rides in the metro, we realised we had lost our way. We ended up in a part of city that was completely alien to us. The sun was slowly setting and huge shadows began to hover above us, sending chills down my spine. We were tired, hungry, confused and lost travellers in a foreign land. We had lost all hope of finding the White House, as well as all energy.

Nearby was a park and we decided to spend some time there before heading back to the campus. As we moved forward, the sight we in front of us took our breath away and we nearly screamed! Right in front of us was the White House, the flag of the United States waving high in the air — we had landed in the Lafayette Park! Excitedly, we hugged each other, overcome with joy.

I couldn’t believe my eyes and repeatedly asked my friend to assure me it really was the White House. We enjoyed our time to the fullest and finally decided to head back since it was getting late and we were supposed to report at the campus by 9 o’clock. But if we thought our adventure had come to an end, we were wrong.

We lost our way back and debated a long time at the subway station about which metro to take. My friend insisted we take the Vienna and I gave in. During our ride, we constantly argued about whether the metro we were in was the right one or the wrong one. A man sitting nearby overheard our conversation and asked us where we wanted to go.

“But this metro is heading out of D.C.,” he enlightened us. We looked at each other, flabbergasted. I overcame the sudden urge to throw my friend out of the moving bus. The man advised us to get off at the next stop, which we did.

We then asked many people to guide us which metro to take and finally, to our relief, ended up in the right one. When I checked my wristwatch, it was 10 o’clock and a wave of panic ran inside me. However, I calmed down, and my friend and I had a good laugh about our adventure.

Sometimes, the best moments happen when things are unplanned.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 6th, 2018