Our Overland Adventure will take us across Europe, where there is a magnitude of road & GPS maps available. The further we cross Asia, the less reliable and available overland mapping products become.
GPS products have now extended from the PC to standalone equipment and even to mobile phones. Nokia (who now own Navtech) have made available, for free, Ovi Maps for use on a mobile phone with navigation, which means 3 handheld GPS devices at no cost. (You don’t get that on an iPhone !!)
Link: http://maps.nokia.com/ovi-services-and-apps/ovi-maps
Most maps these days are very expensive reaching up to £130 for each region. Once you are out of Europe, these maps are no better than those provided by an open source project like openstreetmap. This website allows you to download routable open street map data for use with either PC software or Automobile sat navs.
Link – http://garmin.na1400.info/routable.php
Other country specific free maps:
Malaysia: http://www.malfreemaps.com/ http://www.malsingmaps.com/portal/
Indonesia: http://www.navigasi.net/goptd.php
Australia: http://www.gpsoz.com.au/tracks4australia/
Argentina: http://www.proyectomapear.com.ar/
Brazil: http://www.tracksource.org.br/
Colombia: http://www.colrut.com/
New Zealand: http://www.nzopengps.org/
Peru: http://www.perut.org/
Venezuela: http://www.gpsyv.net/
We have therefore decided to use a mixture of GPS equipment and road maps:
GPS
- 1 x Tomtom 730 – For use mainly in EU
- 1 x Garmin 1690 (With Google Search free in Europe) – For use worldwide
- 1 x Globalsat BT-335 Bluetooth GPS and Data Logger (Additionally Geo Tag our photo’s) – For use worldwide & with PC and phones
- 1 x Globalsat BT-338x Bluetooth GPS and Data Logger (Additionally Geo Tag our photo’s) – For use worldwide & with PC and phones
- 2 x Nokia N97 – using free Ovi Maps – These phones also double up as a personal radio, MP3 player in addition to Bluetooth Audio for our car stereo. With a massive 48GB of storage each, we will not be running out of music on the road.
- 1 x Nokia N95 – using fee Ovi Maps
Road Maps & Travel Guides
Where there is no access to GPS devices with POI’s or the internet, we will have to rely on old-fashioned travel guides and maps.
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