In July, Asvatha Babu and her husband set off for Bengaluru from Chennai to attend a wedding. Instead of taking their usual hatchback, owing to the amount of luggage they were carrying, they took an SUV, with their child seated in the back. The Chennai-Bengaluru expressway is partially operational, and there was a diversion on the way. Relying on Google Maps, the couple took a detour that would briefly take them into Andhra Pradesh. This was a common enough route to take — through Ranipet and Chittoor — for journeys terminating in North Bengaluru, while routes to the heart of the city usually rely on the highway network within Tamil Nadu itself.
In a few minutes though, Babu found herself on a “dirt road in the middle of nowhere with trees all around and basically no streetlights”. Two cars behind her were similarly stranded, a few kilometres from the Kunjanur Rainforest. Fortunately, there was enough daylight — and company — to backtrack and exit back north, and reach the Bengaluru-Tirupati highway, putting them back on track. But the detour had cost them precious hours, and by the time they reached the venue, the festivities had wound down.