Maps and Navigation
Maps
Maps are possibly one of the most useful and essential pieces of
equipment that you will carry with you. Do not expect to rely on signposts which are often
non-existant and where they do exist, may be in a script that you cannot
decipher!
It is important to obtain the majority of your maps
prior to leaving your home country.
Not only does this assist in your route planning but the quality
of maps that you can buy en-route can be very poor (and the maps are
often worse than useless). For
example, we met an Indian who gave up in despair with local maps and
imported a Lonely Planet India road atlas from the Netherlands!
In some countries, such as Pakistan and Iran, it can be
impossible to find local maps. For
some reason, Pakistanis can’t grasp the concept of using maps.
Even military men are unable to point to where you are on a map!
The only exception to this general point of
obtianing maps prior to departure, is with regard to town and city plans
– it is usually possible to obtain free maps for each town from the
local tourist board. These
are usually only carried by the local tourist offices and as such, the
national tourist office is unlikely to be of much help.
We took potluck and relied on the poor quality maps in our
guidebooks to take us to the local tourist information offices to pickup
a better town plan.
When you are obtaining maps for countries that use
a different alphabet (eg Islamic/Arabic script, cyrillic, sanskrit or
chinese) it may be worth getting at least one map that has place names
written in the local script. This
will make matching the scribbles on road signs with places on the map a
great deal easier! Otherwise,
you end up stopping at every junction and asking the way.
This usually involves a great deal of gesturing and repeating the
place name in 100 different pronounciations until someone realises which
place you want to go to!
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Sources of maps
1.
Map shops – Specialised map shops
such as Stanfords in Longacre, Covent Garden and the London Map Centre
hold vast stocks of maps from all over the world.
You can browse to your hearts content and you are more or less
guaranteed to find what you are searching for.
If standard road maps are not available for the area you need,
Stanfords also stocks air charts for all areas.
Stanfords also operate a mail order service if you can’t get to
London.
2.
Book shops – Large branches of
bookshops such as Waterstones, Dillons and Heffers often stock a good
variety of foreign maps. Most
bookshops will be able to order you a map if you know exactly what you
want.
3.
Tourist Information Offices – Contact
the National Tourist Information Offices for each country that you
intend to travel through. Tell
them what you plan to do and they will send you useful information and
maps for the areas you intend to visit.
This is usually free of charge.
You may have to send a stamped addressed envelope.
Most countries have an office in London.
The contact details can be found in the Directory section of the
Travellers Handbook.
4.
Automobile Clubs – Contact the
National Automobile Association for each country that you intend to
travel through. Tell them
what you plan to do. If you
are a member of the RAC or AA you may find that they have reciprocal
agreements that entitle you to basic breakdown cover.
They often send out free maps to members as well.
The German Association provides a particularly comprehensive map
set!
5.
Maps on the Web – There are a number
of map archives available on the web.
Some, such as the archive at Texas University, allow anyone to
download maps in gif and jpeg format free of charge.
There are also a number of interactive map services available.
However, I didn’t actually find anything on the web that could
have been considered useful as a road atlas!
Still, it is probably worth a trawl around, there may be
something out there that I missed!
6.
Route Planning Software – If you
intend to take a laptop or handheld PC with you on your travels it may
be worthwhile investigating the Route Planning software available. We used an excellent package produced by Delorme called ‘EARTHA
Global Explorer’. This
software runs from a CD ROM or DVD and contains a database of satellite
images covering the whole of the world.
Roads have been overlaid over these pictures to produce detailed
maps. The software also
contains useful information about countries, towns and places of
interest! In some cases,
this software often contained more detail than the hard copy maps we
were working from. The
software allowed us to plan the next days route and then upload it into
our GPS. This made
navigation a whole lot easier – no more arguments when the Navigator
is unsure whether they have travelled far enough to have reached the
next junction or is this junction just one that is not on the map!
Without this function the software would not have been useful to
us for navigation while travelling – we wouldn’t have wanted to have
the laptop running the whole of the time we were driving!
It is also possible to purchase more detailed route planning
software for Europe and North America such as Microsoft’s ‘AutoRoute
Europe’ or ‘Personal Navigator’.
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Navigation
When you are actually on the road, it is well worth keeping a
‘Navigators Log’, particularly if you don’t have a GPS.
This can save on big arguments when you’ve misplaced yourself
on the map. The Navigators
Log doesn’t have to be fancy – just a small notebook that you keep
handy while driving. Record
the time and odometer mileage of landmarks, towns and turnings as you
pass them. It is also handy
to have a comments column for any extra information.
If you then find that you are unsure where you are, it makes it
easier to deduce the exact position on the map.
Beware of roads that aren’t shown on the map – be aware of
distances on the road and on the map!
You can also use the log to keep track of fuel economy – log
when you stop for fuel and include the quantity of fuel that you bought.
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