Wednesday, August 03, 2011

e1m3: new secret passage found

a few days ago, when browsing around google maps, i came across a curious looking small grid of roads near my route from home to office.

on closer glance, it looked like i may have found an alternate route that bypasses quite a few traffic jams on my way home.

so on tuesday, after work, i decided to explore the area.

what followed was something that took me back 15 years, when i was a big fan of doom: it looked like a secret passage.

it appeared out of nowhere. i wouldn't have even noticed it if i wasn't looking for it. it was a dark, narrow path, lined with high bushes on either side, peppered with briskly walking men and strangely aggressive bikers.

mud soon gave way to muck and slush, and finally, i got to the point where i thought the map was wrong: a 50-foot stream (more like an oversized gutter, actually).

everyone i had asked said there was only one way across that gutter, and that was the big, traffic-laden bridge, with traffic jams at both ends... and that was the main road.

but they were wrong. google maps was right.

there was a bridge. one that would have only been open to pedestrians, if it wasn't for a broken turnstile at either end (i'm sure it was the doing of those aggressive bikers!)

a few hundred feet later, i was back to civilization, and the strange aura of that mysterious path gave way to a squalid slum.

that's when i realized why there was such a tight grid of roads nearby: it was a neatly-laid-out network of lanes that led to each clump of shanties in the slum.

1 comment:

Pallav said...

The problem with shortcuts is that the roads are often bad. Like the one you told about. If the traffic is less on well made roads, even a longer route is better than a shitty shortcuts.

Oh well :)

N

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