For those who are interested, I have updated our WEB page to include more details on using a GPS in Russia and Mongolia.

http://dreamers1.com/russia/Practica...m#Maps_and_GPS

Geoff..

I have just travelled as far as Kazan (only 2 weeks off work!) and knew none of this GPS stuff, I had my garmin streetpilot, a fairly sizeable unit, on the dash all the time when I was travelling at borders etc and never had a problem. I was warned when I travelled in Africa of the same probs but everyone uses them, we just used to hide ours at checkpoints. Pays not t get too hung up about these things me thinks.

andy
1990 landcruiser
landrover 101 ambie
ford escort, morris minor traveller!!

I declared my GPS on entry to Russia at the Russian/Finnish border last year and also on exit to the Estonia border, i read they were legal thats why i declared them. I had no problems, by the way any one know where i can obtain street leval city maps for my Garmin, for Russian cities

Maverick Bubble

I have been 11 times in Russia and around, covered all between North Korea border and Murmansk, never had a problem with police and the GPS; I always told them it is an electronic map.

I am currently in Russia with a GPS device and although the police makes me stop up to seven times a day, I never had a problem with my GPS. Even those officers who really try hard to get money or presents never argued my GPS device being illegal (and therefore I had to pay something).

Further, I think a lot of the police officers realize that the electronic map is a GPS device. My russian is not very good, but the often talk about "navigation sputnik" which should be understood as satellite navigation, I think.

Regards

Lars

There are companies in russia working on producing satnav maps - I know a least one russian company - navicom - doing this (for garmin). I don't think they'd waste their time unless people were able to get away with using their products in everyday practice. Forget about legalities.

Russian laws are applied in a very arbitrary way because the function of russian law is to separate people into two groups: those who must follow a particular rule and those who can ignore it. The entire russian legal code should start with the words "it depends" - on who you are, who you know, how much money you've got and what works in practice.

If everyone followed all the rules, nothing would happen in russia. However, quite alot happens, so people must be ignoring the rules quite alot!

The last 2 paragraphs were taken from a book written by a russian who was attempting to explain why russia was different to western countries.

Rgds

Les

This doesn't have anything to do with the legal question involved in this thread, but I contacted Navicom by email in March about the availability of Garmin compatible maps, and below is the answer I received:

"Unfortunately we haven't all maps of Russia now. Only the small part of west Russia we have."

So it appears Navicom isn't very helpful for someone overlanding across the country.


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Mike

[This message has been edited by liketoride2 (edited 16 June 2005).]

[This message has been edited by liketoride2 (edited 16 June 2005).]