Why can't I access WSL directories from my windows terminal?

Question

I have made a python script in WSL using VSCode. I want to call this script from another python script that is running in Windows.

My plan was to use os.system() to command line into wsl and start the script from it's directory, however when I go into windows terminal to try to start it manually, I can't access any of my directories.

The path I am attempting to access from terminal is \wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\ben\apps and root user can't access it either.

Windows terminal:

(base) PS C:\Users\benja> wsl
ben@DESKTOP:/mnt/c/Users/benja$ cd ~
ben@DESKTOP:~$ ls
ben@DESKTOP:~$ ls -a
.  ..  .bash_history  .bash_logout  .bashrc  .profile
ben@DESKTOP:~$ cd ..
ben@DESKTOP:/home$ ls
ben
ben@DESKTOP:/home$ cd /ben
-bash: cd: /ben: No such file or directory
ben@DESKTOP:/home$ cd ..
ben@DESKTOP:/$ ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  init  lib  lib64  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var
ben@DESKTOP:/$ cd ..
ben@DESKTOP:/$ cd /home/ben/apps

Answer 1

WSL has both Ubuntu and Debian. apps is in Ubuntu, however my WSL was defaulting to Debian. That is why the directories were empty.

Answer 2

You're accessing /ben aka root_directory/ben
try: ~/apps or cd ben