When visiting Ladakh you’ll encounter many Europeans navigating with large size Olizane paper maps (scale 1:150K). Olizane maps have been around for 2 decades and cover the entire Ladakh region and North Himachal. These are slightly less detailed (less terrain detail) topographic maps that mainly show popular hiking routes, passes, peaks and settlements. These are topographic maps with 100m interval contour lines. The trails shown on these maps are a bit less accurate (more schematic then exact GPS recorded) and higher scale make them less accurate then say OSM. Contour interval is also 10x less than OSM. Still the larger scale features on these maps are perfect for manual referenced navigation.
Navigation
Hikers do not use GPS to identify their exact position on the map. Instead they *cross reference* the terrain features shown on the map with what they see on the ground to identify their approx. location and direction forward. Note that this technique is more feasible in an open, gradual landscape of Ladakh than the steep / densely forested hills of the lower Himalayas. Several features can be cross referenced between ground / map:
Direction of valleys / trail (N/E/S/W)
Turn in valleys / trail (change of direction)
Side-stream / valley crossing
Trail goes left / right side of river
Trail is close to / x m above river
Trail contours horizontally vs. ascends / descends (refer contours)
Split in the trail (check both directions)
Features passed: village, river, bridge, split in trail, peak, forest line, pass
Distance covered: 1.5km on ground = 1cm on the map (1:150K)
Change in type of terrain: forest / open / glacier
Etc.
By correlating the features on the map and ground the hiker can identify his approximate location on the map and stay on track / proceed in the right direction. Take the example below:
Route Description
Start at Bishitao
Trail contours (horizontal) Southeast 300m above stream
Cross gully (small stream) on left
Pass side valley on left (trail split)
Cross side stream
Climb up to 500m above river crossing ridgeline
Descent back to 300m above river
Trail split (other goes down)
Contour East 300m above stream
Cross gully on left
Turn East into 2nd side valley (trail split)
Climb up 600m as per contours
Contour East 100m above stream
Cross gully 1 on left
Cross gully 2 on left
Cross stream before 1st gully on right (trail split)
Climb 1100m Southeast right above gully to ridgeline
Cross ridgeline and contour South to Gun Jot pass
Cross ridgeline and descent into side-valley
Follow right side of gully
Proceed West in side-valley right above stream till Kumar
In this example we focus mainly on terrain features, ignoring the villages / names which are also very useful to guide us along the way:
Assignment
It’s time for some hands-on now. Navigate your way from Phindpar in the Chandrabaga valley across the Gunal Gali pass into Sechu Nala valley to Chasag in the Chasag Nala valley. Similar as in the above example list out the terrain features used to identify the correct route across the map / ground + provide a detailed route description from start to end. You can download a hi-res map from here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rvhGqoddh7WYDbJxTw_IR2uhK4e19Sho/view?usp=sharing
Upload your annotated map with notes and your route description (similar as above example) in a public folder and submit a link to the folder in the form below.
