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Cycling without a map

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Cycling without a map does not have to be a disaster as the following story tells you. Usually you will be able to find a map, good or bad as happened in north Iran with me. It took me a few days in Iran to find a map in Farsi! In China and Thailand I used frequently maps in local language too.

I had cycled through East Turkey. No problems with that. I loved the area. Turkey is a beautiful country for cycling. Especially the east is still quite wild.

From Erzurum I had gone further east in the direction of the Iranian border, a town called Dogubayazit. Roads are good here but and in general the traffic was not a problem. It was just the buses that make the life of a cyclist sometimes difficult since they are not giving you much space.

I had taken some sideways, camped in the middle of nowhere only disturbed by animals who probably never had seen a cyclist camping. In fact I had been sometimes cycling without a map although I had one with me! Cycling without a map through the desert, no map needed, there's just one way

I had tried to buy a map of Iran in Istanbul and later in Ankara but I had failed to obtain one. All I had was a memory of Tehran which would lie in central north Iran and Esfahan which would be more south. Further I knew roughly the shape of the country.

And with that knowledge I crossed the border. I hoped against better, I would be able to get a map in the next town. That should be Tabriz as I was told. However, Tabriz was still along way and not easy to cycle in one day.

I stayed a night in a little town just after the border. The next morning I left and soon I came at a junction. The road I was cycling on was not very busy but the junction gave me an option to go south on a more remote road. The map I had seen in Dogubayazit showed a road going south, to the Iranian province Kurdistan.

Why not go into the deep and go south? There was a town mentioned: Orumiyeh. So I took that direction. It was a small town. I hoped to find a map here. So I was cycling without a map south into the unknown.

To my surprise there were quite some people who spoke English. They directed me to a little bookstore. Here I found a map. The map was rough but good enough for my purpose with one slight disadvantage: I couldn't read it! It was in Farsi.

During my journey through Iran I found many people willing to help me out to translate the names on the map into English. And since the road-signs were in English too, I had further no problems to find my way around. In fact, I even gave up to get an English map here.

Chinese maps

I used the same trick as in Iran. In China I found the local Chinese provincial maps (in general) much more accurate then the Nelles maps I was used too. The Chinese maps, in Chinese of course, gave me much more and better details of the roads.

In China therefore I used the Chinese maps in general and the Nelles maps as a back up to check town and city names. It was an excellent way of getting my information.

I came at a junction. There was a road to the left and a road straight. There was also a board with a sign Kunming straight and a small town to the right!. Now, there wasn't a road going to the right! I had a problem. In general you can decide to take the biggest or the best looking road. I had tried that before and apart of one time, it had always worked well. Here however I had no idea. Both roads looked identical. Both roads could be ok.

Fortunately there was a little house nearby. A man came out but walked away, probably to shy. Then two other men came out of the house. I asked them in my best Chinese where to go to Kunming. They looked at each each other and stared at me. They obviously had no idea what I was talking about. Probably my tongue was wrong as Mandarin is a tonal language and I hardly mastered it.

But I showed them the map. Immediately the faces relaxed and they started to talk now. The map was in Chinese and I had showed them the characters for Kunming. They told me I had to go to the left since the continuing road would end up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. So I asked them again: Kunming? Again they stared, they said"... meio, meio... (no no) Kunming" and waved in the exact same direction as I had done. Apparently I had not used the correct tones for the word Kunming.

But at least I had my answers. The map had helped me out. The men were so excited to be able to help me, I couldn't leave without eating something with them. And so I did, and so I had my information based on the map in Chinese and the men would be able to tell their friends about a crazy white man on a bicycle! All of us were happy.

So, what does it tell you? Maps are not only useful in planning your journey, it's also a form of communication in countries where you don't speak the language.

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