Shahwar is as impressed by Google maps as the next guy, but says you also need to account for ground realities.

Other than writing travel stories, I also run a motorcycle-touring outfit called Chain Reaction India. An overwhelming percentage of my tours run through remote areas. I like it that way. You can see village life in all its rustic glory, where the way of life that has remained relatively unchanged for a millennia. It’s in these back-of-beyond places that you get to see customs and traditions that are all but lost to the city folk.

Motorcycling is the best way to visit these remote places. The freedom of two wheels allows you to ride through some obscure routes that you can’t find on any maps. And even if these do feature on some maps, they are marked as incomprehensible crooked lines that are vague representations of route and distance.

Now, there are people who swear by these maps – online maps. Almost every month I get calls from some prospective clients who want to travel through the interiors of North-East India. A huge percentage of these people have never been to these areas, and have no idea of the road conditions. They draw up some very interesting itineraries based on Google maps, and they want to do those within a very tight timeframe.

When I say, “No, you can’t ride that stretch in a day,” they invariably respond with, “Why not? It’s just 150 kilometres!” Well, there’s a thing known as ‘ground realities,’ and Google maps make no mention of that.

Many of the routes that I travel on had roads ‘once upon a time.’ Over the years, most of the roads have been ground back to stone and dust, while the jungles have taken back some of them completely. On many of these roads, you can touch the scary speed of 10-15km/h – scary because it seems like you’ll never get off that road and reach some civilisation.

These roads are extremely adventurous, super tiring, and outright fun to ride – but only if you travel without a preconceived notion that the distance can (and should) be covered in ‘X’ number of hours.

A group got in touch with me some time back, and said that they wanted to travel with me – I agreed. They had travelled more or less throughout India, and had set some impressive records in terms of distance covered within a short period of time. They wanted to cover a lot of areas in 12 days of riding through the interiors of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. They really were prepared – maps with distance, estimated time of travel, elevation, weather, and a whole lot of excel sheets.

When I complimented them about their level of their preparedness, they were very happy and said that was how they always travelled. But they sure didn’t like it one bit when I pointed out that their maps didn’t tell the whole story, and that they had their estimated travel time all wrong. After many mails were exchanged, and my phone bills ran high, the group decided to travel according to my schedule. They then realised that their estimated travel time was a long way off the mark.

Frankly speaking, we hardly have any accurate maps – at least I haven’t come across any, I don’t about you. There are always discrepancies.  Distances on national highways are fine and largely accurate, but it’s the state highways and the back roads that are the tricky ones. They are never anywhere near as accurate.

The rivers shift, streams appear where there were none, and the existing roads disintegrate and disappears so very often. These maps are not updated, and can send your travel plan for a particular day straight out of the window.

When travelling through the interiors, it makes sense to take the advice of someone who knows the region and the ground realities. It sure will save you a lot of headache.