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Russian Traverse Track Files - Read me

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Please Read me!

Mark and Jane did a motorcycle trip through Russia from June 2007 to October 2007


These track files contain 21,072 km of track files in Russia and a few in western Europe.

They also contain about 550 waypoints from the trip.

CAMPING SPOTS ARE NOT OFFICIAL CAMPING SPOTS. The camping spots are simply clearings in the forest or at the side of the road which we thought would give us some shelter from prying eyes.

There are no reliable water supplies at these spots or any other facilities e.g. washing, cleaning or bathing facilities. Although a good number of the spots do have water supplies, please assume that there is no water available.

There may be bears, encephalitis ticks and mosquitoes and other natural or man-made hazards at these camping sites (including asbestos and other industrial waste).

Criminals, including organised criminal gangs and opportunistic criminals may operate in and around areas marked. We never had any problems and fell in love with Russia and her inhabitants. That doesn't mean you should be careless though.

A note about PETROL STATIONS

I have marked about 150 petrol stations on this map.
Petrol is readily available in Russia and we never had to go more than about 150 km to find gas.

We marked petrol stations whenever we remembered to push the button on the GPS.
The petrol stations called Petrol Alex xx are courtesy of Alexey (shustrik). I have not visited those stations, but the information should be reliable.

Some of the petrol stations marked on this map may have since closed down, and others opened up.

DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. Maps with petrol stations marked are readily available in Russia at any old book shop.

Good luck!

FILES

The files are available here http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earmb/

There are two types of files in the directories.

You can open the KMZ files in Google Earth (Available at Google Earth)
I’ve carved up the trip into a couple of sections otherwise Google Earth complains about memory.

You can open the GDB files in Garmin Mapsource. This software should be included with your Garmin GPS unit. If you are planning a trip, the Garmin files will be much more useful than the Google Earth files, because they contain additional information.

You can easily convert GDB to KMZ and about 50 other file formats using a wonderful program called GPSBabel (GPSBabel: convert, upload, download data from GPS and Map programs), so if you don’t have a Garmin unit, or mapsource, download GPSBabel and do whatever you want with the data.

Population data has been uplifted from Google Earth. Population data in the comments section of the Garmin waypoint files will give you some idea about how much service or otherwise a town will provide.

This data is open source and free. Do whatever the hell you want with it. Just don’t complain if a petrol station or camp ground marked isn’t up to your expectations. Russia is what it is, and it changes rapidly.

My memory chip rattled loose somewhere around Irkutsk, hence some track data is missing in the middle. By looking at the waypoints you should have a fair idea of where we went though.

Sorry I can't upload the files to the forum directly.

Bob's World map project is fantastic. (Smellybiker's Wanderlust Worldmap • Index page) and helped me a lot. If you want Russian maps Bob's site is the place to start.

Best of luck.

The complete file set is available here http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earmb/

Mark and Jane

Jane and Mark - Russian Traverse 2007
russiantraverse <AT> gmail <DOT> com


(Replace <AT> with @ and <DOT> with .)

Thanks, it's usefull for my trip (Mongolia-Spain).