How I (almost) became a Refugee!

Trip to Niagara was long overdue and this might have turned out to be my last trip in US! Not that I'm heading back to my homeland, but because I might have been either behind the bars or deported as a refugee in Canada! All thanks to Google maps, I realized it the hard way that how so ever efficient and reliable the system be, one should always be question it and be attentive.

We happily started our trip to Niagara Falls on early Saturday morning from NY. We hoped to reach the destination by early evening, take some rest and then view the great falls at night in all its colors and beauty. But the forces (read Google) had some other plans. We hit I-87N and kept speeding on towards our destination. After 6 hours of drive, we became active and excited to be so near to the falls. But guess what - we were on the Canada border!!! WHAT! WHY! WHAT the HELL!! These were some of our instant reactions. We were still 8 hours away from our original destination!! We looked at the map at least thousand times trying to figure out how can we be here. It felt we were following the map point-to-point. But here it goes, the google map befooled us. Instead of taking us to Niagara within US boundary, it made us go via Canada. At that instant we felt a bit afraid since not all of us had the passport. We carried the valid IDs - our NY driver's license.

We were sure that Canadian immigration will definitely let us cross the borders and also give us the papers stating that they allow us to leave their country. But the fear was what will happen at the US immigration. How will they validate our genuine case? Why will they allow me to come in US with no passport? I started thinking of the prison at this point. So on Canadian side, immigration made us sit for an hour, gave us some papers allowing us to leave their country. Now we were at the US border. Our fingers crossed. As I presented my driver's license to the immigration guy, the first sentence that I heard was - 'I dont care about this. I want passport'. I started sweating a bit. Then started his series of questions - whats your nationality, whats your status in US, why are you not carrying your passport etc etc. I tried to keep my composure answering all the questions. Then finally he asked me to hand over my driver's lincense. Then luckily my wife's passport had my name endorsed on it. So that saved me I guess. Then thanks to the US database where everything is linked to the driver's license, the guy was probably able to validate my identity in US. He let all of us go and cross the US border, but cautioned me to always carry the passport. Did he think that after this scary incident I'll ever travel without my passport?? He must be crazy to think so!

From there we drove like crazy, breaking all the speed limits - our van was running at an average speed of 80 miles/hr! At mid night we reached Niagara, but surely missed the view of the falls at night. Next day we covered all the spots in Niagara. The beauty and might of the falls made us forget the sadness of the previous day. We were so much engulfed in the white water of the falls, that it completely erased the bad experience. We started the journey back home at around 4pm to reach NY at midnight.

The first thing we did the next day was to validate the google map and to our surprise we found that yes it was the fault of the google maps only. We right away mailed the google letting them know of the error they have in their maps. I guess no one else gets trapped in such situation. I narrowly escaped being a refugee in Canada!