I didn't take the fastest route.
I didn't even know where I was going, really.
The signal dropped somewhere between two dusty turns,
and for once, I didn't panic.
I asked.
A stranger pointed.
Then someone else offered to walk me halfway.
By the time I got there, I didn't just arrive—I had already been welcomed.
No app knew the shortcut through the orchard.
No satellite could read the old woman's nod toward the slope behind the temple.
No map warned me I'd stop for mangoes from a boy with the widest smile I'd seen all day.
I wasn't rerouting.
I was remembering how to follow life, not lines.
Without GPS, you start looking up.
At doors. At people. At possibility.
The world becomes a conversation again.
You begin to listen more deeply—to tone, to gesture, to the kindness of being a little lost.
Wrong turns start feeling like soft detours designed just for you.
When I finally reached the place—
it wasn't the photo I'd seen online.
It was smaller. Quieter. Warmer.
There was a bench with chipped paint.
A breeze that smelled like cumin and stories.
A local man who said, "You came the real way."
Some places don't want to be searched.
They want to be found.
By presence.
By people.
By letting go of control.