Ron,

In Africa, as Andrew said, Garmin maps may be just sufficient for major roads. These can often be driven even without a map - just follow the tarmac and if in doubt, ask the locals or take a picture of a map sketched for you with a stick in the sand. Why bother with a GPS?

Try going to places of interest in remote areas, which for most of us is the main reason to travel the world, and you will find that navigating with your shiny GPSMAP or whatever is still like it used to be in the dark ages.

Ron, have you successfully downloaded many files in African internet cafes, not even large files like maps? I am not talking about places in villages, but large towns too.

Oh, I have tried it and am convinced such trust would be, euphemistically speaking, very misplaced.

Ollie

We leave mid June. Cant wait life is just hanging around now waiting for May when we can arange the Iranian & Pakistan Visas. Will get the Indian in Islamabad.

Ollie,

I don't know what route you intend to take to Oz but thinking about it, if you are happy with a gps system that mainly will take you from town to town, out of the box so to speak, then a unit with the Garmin Worldmap may be the ticket.

I've just tried it again for India and while it again doesn't offer the detail you could get by researching and obtaining better maps, which could possibly get complicated, it may be enough for you at least as your main system, backed up with paper maps of any local areas required. SImple!

Have a look at this -
Garmin: MapSource - WorldMap


Click on the top right "Map source map viewer" and have a play to see what it can do.

Andrew.

I've just tried Worldmap for the UK and it doesn't show the town where I live - Crowborough...population 21000....

Andrew.

T4 maps
 

Get them for Africa. brilliant.

Also read about this system. Its basically a laptop that you can tear the screen away from the actual pc. The pc reacts via bluetooth to the screen which is also a touch screen.

So one could but the unit permanently behind the front seat. the Screen could then be used in a very small mount in the front or wherever you need it.

Will find out name of PC soon.

Ollie,

Should you decide that you want highly detailed maps for the whole of your trip instead of Garmin worldmap's basic details the simplest answer is use these Russian maps available from TTQV on CD. You'll need TTQV v4 to use them and download to your gps/pda/laptop.

Although in Russian, major locations are also marked in English and the level of detail is very good although IGN mpas of Africa re certainly better in this regard.

You shouldn't get lost with these!

TTQV Australia/Asia maps (Russian)
http://www.ttqv.com/download/pdf/karten_asien_e.pdf

Andrew

Not Cheap
 

Wow - those maps aren't cheap are they! My god.

Must be a cheaper way of getting maps surely?

I'm off to search the net ........

thanks again Andrew. I've not ruled them out yet!

Hi,

I use a Mitac Mio P 350 with built in GPS (retails for around €250,00), running TomTom (Europe) and Ozi (off-road). With a 2 Giga SD card you can take all the maps you need for your trip to Oz.

I also use my faithful Garmin V for backup, as I dont believe the PDA to be sturdy enough for the piste.

CD with all Russian maps :Turkey to Indonesia 79 euros....

Webshop Touratech-QV

Ollie,

have you seen this thread? Digitized Russian military map sheets at topomaps.eu - The HUBB

Cheapest option is to download the maps you need (as suggested above) and then calibrate them for use with Ozieexplorer (PC and PDA versions).

The Touratech TTQV set up is expensive and coded to prevent you from using their maps with other companies software - remember to price in their map reading software if you go down that route.

Richard,

TTQV can read many different bitmap file formats, so it's not limited to proprietary maps.There are some maps that can be used only with Touratech QuoVadis but they were coded by the people who sell the maps. These maps can still be exported from TTQV to another format.

TTQV may be more expensive that OziExplorer but it also does many more jobs and has excellent customer suppport.

My apologies to everybody! I didn't notice that this was the 4WD section! Wow, if i had the luxury of travelling in a cage (oops, easy there Ron! ;) ) I would be taking advantage of the resources you speak of. Man, who carries an open laptop on a motorcycle??
...that being said, although Worldmap, well,sucks! It has become an ever important tool for me. Most of the cities i've discovered in C and S America have not even been closo, or do not exist at all. Oddly, what has been relevant info is rivers and major cities, along with major highways (give or take a kilometer or two;) ). With these i can always discover my placement on my trusty old paper map with minimal effort. I've never been through Africa, but will in the future and will be looking to all of you for advice when i do. For now, i feel over my head and will be backing out of this thread. Enjoy!

The Touratech map CDs can only be viewed/printed/exported with the TTQV software, so it does need to be priced into their purchase.

The free 30 day trial you get with the Touratech maps won't let you print or export, so you're effectively bound into buying QuoVadis if you want to use them.

Both Ozi and TTQV get the job done, but I like the fact that the Ozi stuff is more open-source.

Ha, ha I've seen weirder things on motorcycles - a lot of them on this site! But back to the cages, the temptation to fill them up with toys and gadgets can be hard to resist sometimes!