I was out of Chillicothe before the town had properly woken up.
The ritual was the same as Soumya's driveway — unpack little the night before, pack in the morning with deliberate care, restore a sense of order before surrendering to the beautiful disorder of the road. There is something about this routine that I was beginning to trust. The packing was the last thing I controlled. After that, the road decided.
And today, the road was taking me to West Virginia.
I had heard West Virginia in songs before I had ever looked at it on a map. Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong — West Virginia, mountain mama.
Soumya's voice was in my ear, as it had been since Normal — follow the speed limit signs and you will navigate well. I followed. I navigated. I was happy.
Then I crossed the West Virginia river, saw the signboard welcoming me to the Mountain State, and the phone signal quietly disappeared.
It did not happen all at once. First patchy, then unreliable, then gone. The GPS screen stared at me blankly. I was in proper woods now — thin at first, then thick, the big trees closing over the road like a roof. I was enjoying it. Eyes on the road, carefully reading each curve, the scenic beauty arriving from all directions — ahead, both sides, the rear view mirror framing what I was leaving behind like a painting I would never own.
Then the road ended.
A closure. Unmarked on any map I had, unannounced by any signal I could receive. I sat there for a moment and took stock — no GPS, no signal, no data, no way to call anyone, printed maps that showed roads but not this particular problem. Just instinct and road signs and whatever came next.
I turned left.
Not knowing where it would take me. Whether it would fold back onto the road I had been on or carry me somewhere else entirely. This is the thing about decisions — you never fully know. There are parallel lives waiting at every fork, diverging infinitely, never intersecting. Richard Bach explored this in One and in other books — the idea that every choice creates a version of you that goes the other way. Robert Frost, of course, said it first and said it better. Two roads in a wood. I took the one that turned left and told myself it would make all the difference.
The big trees blocked the sunlight. The road narrowed. And then I found it — a small water body, still and dark, with a wooden deck extending over it. I parked. I walked to the edge of the deck. Across the water, an abandoned house looked back at me, windows empty, roof patient. I rolled a cigarette and stood there.
Nothing crossed the road. Nothing hurried me. No sound that needed answering, no phone that could ring. I was completely with myself, in a way that a city, a conference, a full life of obligations rarely permits. This moment was entirely mine. I stayed until I was ready to leave, which is the only correct amount of time to stay anywhere.
Then I drove for another hour and the solitude began to shift from beautiful to unsettling.
Where were the other cars? No one was overtaking me, no one was coming the other way. The road kept offering itself ahead and I kept accepting it, but with decreasing confidence. Whom would I ask, if I needed to ask? There was no one to ask.
And then the signpost appeared.
It said, verbatim, in letters that left no room for interpretation — YOUR GPS IS WRONG. PLEASE GO BACK.
I was shell-shocked. Every Hollywood film I had ever watched in which a group of travellers ventures into the American wilderness and meets some unspeakable country legend came flooding back simultaneously. I sat with this information for a moment, in a car, on a road that had just been told to go back, in the middle of West Virginia, with no signal and no fuel to spare.
Then someone arrived.
A farmer. Friendly, unhurried, entirely unbothered by the sight of an Indian man staring in panic at a signpost in his woods. He knew exactly what my situation was — he had, I suspect, seen this before. He directed me to a small unpaved road that wound down from where we stood. I had no choice but to trust him completely, which is the most exposed kind of trust there is.
I drove down the unpaved road. It was not built for a Nissan Altima. I leaned in, kept it slow, kept it careful. It seemed to go on forever, the trees pressing closer, the surface making its objections felt through the steering wheel.
Then, in my rear-view mirror — headlights. Another car, behind me, on the same impossible road.
Every Hollywood instinct fired at once. I gripped the wheel. I kept driving. And then, in the way that ordinary reality eventually asserts itself over an overactive imagination, both of us emerged onto something resembling a proper motorway, the other driver peeling off without drama, without incident, without being any kind of country legend at all.
I checked my printed maps. I could not work out where I was — no signpost, no landmark I could match to anything on paper. I knew only that Aurora and Romney lay ahead, if I was on the right road. I was mixing up Aurora with Anora — the Oscar-winning film — in my head, which tells you something about the state of my concentration at this point.
Then the fuel warning light came on.
I drove twenty more miles on patience and an impatient heart before civilisation appeared — an island of it, surrounded by mountains and streams and trees and animals and the vast indifference of wild America. There was a gas station. A big, tall girl came out before I had fully stopped and did the filling herself, which after my proud solo performance outside Lagootee felt both like a slight and a relief.
Inside was a store that sold everything. Of course it did — there would be nothing else for fifty or seventy miles in any direction. But more than the store, there was a community. People having breakfast together, collecting their weekly groceries, talking to each other with the ease of people who have no choice but to know one another well. I joined them for a while. I explained my trip — the Indian driving Highway 50 alone, the GPS gone, the signpost, the farmer, the unpaved road. They listened with the generous attention of people who have time and are not pretending otherwise. And they confirmed, which was the most important thing, that I was on the right road. Romney was ahead.
Romney stole something from me. So did Winchester, Virginia, which came shortly after.
Romney is the oldest town in West Virginia, though it wears this quietly. Winchester was full of flowers — it was March, and March in Virginia means blooms everywhere, small streams running clear, cafés with their doors open to the new warmth. I should have stopped. I wanted to stop. But Twinkle Apa and Subrat Bhai were waiting in Virginia with their daughter and their dog, and the pull of family — of known warmth after days of beautiful uncertainty — was stronger than any café or flowering street.
Some places you promise to return to. Winchester is on that list.
I drove on. The mountains gave way, the road widened, the signs began to count down the miles to Virginia. The jajabara was not over — but the wandering part of it was drawing to its close, and something warmer was waiting at the other end.
I put my foot down. I had earned this arrival.
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