I thought my phone would save me. That was my first mistake. We’ve been conditioned to believe that with enough data and a high enough refresh rate, we can navigate any corner of the globe without breaking a sweat. It’s a lie. India, specifically, doesn’t care about your Silicon Valley security blanket.

I landed in Delhi with a $1,200 titanium rectangle in my pocket and the smug confidence of a man who has Google Maps offline. Two months later, I left with a cracked screen, a fried charging port, and the realization that I am remarkably bad at being a "digital nomad."

Mistake number one: the eSIM. Everyone on YouTube tells you to grab an Airalo or an Holafly before you touch down. Don't. It’s a trap for the lazy. I spent $30 on a 10GB plan that promised 4G speeds but delivered something closer to dial-up from 1996. The friction started at the Indira Gandhi International arrival hall. My "instant" activation took three hours of frantic refreshing while a dozen taxi drivers offered me "special prices" to hotels I hadn't booked. I eventually caved and bought a physical SIM from a local vendor for 500 rupees. It required a physical passport photo, a scan of my visa, and the name of my father’s first grade teacher. It worked perfectly. The tech-bro solution failed; the analog bureaucracy won.

Then there’s the heat. My hardware wasn't ready for Rajasthan in late spring. You haven't known tech anxiety until your phone displays the "Temperature" warning icon while you’re trying to find a specific alleyway in Jodhpur. I spent half my trip babying a power bank that weighed as much as a brick because the local infrastructure views a steady 220V as a polite suggestion rather than a rule. In Varanasi, the power surged and fried my MacBook’s USB-C brick. That’s a $79 mistake you can't just fix by walking into a Genius Bar. There are no Genius Bars in the ghats. There are just guys who can fix a motorbike with a piece of wire and a prayer.

I also fell for the content trap. I thought I needed to document everything. I carried a mirrorless camera, a gimbal, and a drone that I was too terrified to fly because of the Byzantine local laws. I looked like a walking target. The trade-off for all that "creator" gear? I missed the actual place. I was too busy checking exposure levels to notice the smell of marigolds and diesel. I was so worried about capturing the "vibe" that I forgot to actually feel it.

The biggest tech blunder, though, was my reliance on the IRCTC app. For the uninitiated, the Indian Railways website is the final boss of UI/UX design. It is a labyrinth of captchas, OTPs that never arrive, and "waitlist" numbers that feel like a cruel joke. I spent four hours one night in a humid hostel in Agra trying to book a sleeper berth to Mumbai. I lost. I ended up paying a "travel agent" in a literal hole-in-the-wall 2,000 rupees to do what the app wouldn't. He did it in thirty seconds using a Nokia that looked like it had been through a war.

Solo travel is supposed to be about "finding yourself," but mostly I just found out that I’m addicted to a signal that doesn’t exist in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh. I spent too much time looking for the "perfect" cafe with the "perfect" Wi-Fi, only to find that the best conversations happen when the router is dead. I met a guy in Manali who hadn't checked his email in three weeks. He looked five years younger than me.

By the second month, I stopped looking at the map. I realized that if you get lost in a city of fifteen million people, eventually someone will point you toward a landmark. Usually for a small fee, or just because they think your frantic tapping on a glass screen is hilarious.

We think we’re being smart by automating our adventures. We optimize the fun out of the chaos. We use apps to avoid talking to humans, then wonder why we feel lonely in a crowd. My tech didn't make my trip better. It just acted as a high-definition filter between me and the dirt.

Next time, I’m bringing a paper map and a cheap watch. Or maybe I’ll just stay home and look at the photos some other guy took with his better drone. Is it really a journey if you don't have five bars of 5G to prove it happened?