Navigation
One of those questions before leaving, is how to navigate,
and whether or not to take a GPS.
At some point I was seriously considering to indeed buy a
GPS and I had my mind set on the Garmin Edge Touring. It seemed to be the right
solution, especially because there are ways to import open source maps – which comes
in handy if you’re traveling in remote regions. In the end however, we just
decided to go without. So how did we navigate then?
Well, mostly by using our smartphones and some apps. It
depends a bit on where you are (which country or region) to find the right
map-app – or other solutions.
In Malaysia we used a lot of Bikemap,
which really gave us excellent options. The app version did not work very well on the smartphones, but we prepared on the iPad in advance and that worked fine. Once in Thailand however, we found
ourselves several times on trails that were dead ended, too technical and so
on, so we ditched Bikemap – although we did sometimes still use it to explore
options.
We used Bikemap in combination with Google Maps,
especially after a few mishaps, to ensure that we would not end up on
impossible trails. Google Maps, when using the walking directions, often gives
very good directions for cycling too. The trick is not to search for long
distance directions, but rather in pieces of 20 to 40km. Long distance directions are good
to decide rough directions from A to B, and then you refine in shorter distances
as you go. This definitely worked well in Thailand and most other places.
Once in Laos, most maps were insufficient. But:
maps.me (this is only available as app) came to the rescue and did an excellent job there. Maps.me, and Google Maps
(and Apple Maps) all have practical stuff on them as well: hotels, restaurants –
so you know where there is something to be found, and where probably not.
Usually there is more than what you find on the map. Another big advantage: in
maps.me you can download maps of regions of interest, so they’re available when
you’re offline too – which certainly happens when you’re riding in remote
areas!
In Laos there were not that many roads to choose
from anyway, so navigation was typically very straightforward. China was
similar in that sense, although of course we needed navigation too. It became a
bit more tricky once in China: Google products are not normally available,
unless you have a good VPN installed before entering China! Through VPN Google
Maps mostly did the job still, and Apple Maps came in useful too. Added
handicap: language. You can have a map, but then you need to make sure that
names are available in English, and even if they are, they don’t always match
what you see elsewhere; for instance on road signs or in guidebooks.
For Korea, the usual tools are available, yet
less useful. Next to that, it’s best to have Navermap, a Korean “Google maps”
solution, which you can also use offline. Disadvantage: it’s mostly in Korean.
Good news: it’s not too hard to learn the Korean alphabet. Next to Navermap,
there are the cycling trails in Korea, which are mostly well indicated and for
which you can sometimes find printed maps. That definitely makes life easy!
And finally, in Japan, many tour bikers talk
about using Mapple Touring, which are printed map books. We didn’t use it,
although we checked it out, but found it very confusing – and it’s all in
Japanese. So we stuck to our mobile tools and it worked well – although maps.me
did very weird things and was therefore unusable. Also important to note, there
is a great website in Japan, called Japan Cycling, for very useful and detailed tips, it describes an entire route “the length of
japan” with an incredible wealth of information available.
As a gadget, a GPS could be fun. It gives you all these cool
details about the mileage of the day, total elevation, max climb, max speed, … Nice
if you like your stats; you can do this with your phone too, but it just drains
the battery. We did have a simple and cheap bike computer however, with that we were
able to register our distance covered – which I personally liked a lot.
With all that said and done, navigation really is not that
hard. We did check our route mostly the evening before, mostly to know what a
realistic destination would be for the day after, keeping the terrain in mind (and
to be prepared) but also looking at the options for spending the night. Once we
set out, it typically sorted itself out to some degree, assisted by the
navigation apps – and we hardly ever had a real “plan” for the day. Isn’t that
what bike touring is about?