In this post we take a closer look at end-to-end planning of a route in the Himalayas. Initial planning of the route through mountain passes and villages (food stops) is done on the laptop. The route is then exported and refined on the phone were we generate metrics, overlay points of interest and finally start navigating
Plan a route
For a sample Himalayan traverse from Stok to Korzok in Ladakh. Planning is best done on a larger laptop screen. Open nakarte.me in a browser. Use the default mapy.cz topographic base map. Select “+” to create a new track. Search for “Stok” village to show the location on the map:
Use the “Add Point” tool to mark Stok on the map. Repeat the same for “Korzok” village near Tso Moriri. Select the “Waymarked Hiking Trails” overlay to show OSM hiking routes on the base map:
Starting from Stok follow the blue (national) hiking route and mark (red) all villages (food points) along the way. Create a new Track and mark all passes (yellow) along the way:
There are a total of 6 villages and 11 mountain passes along a continuous blue hiking route from Stok to Korzok: Export both layers using “Save as GPX” option:
Import on phone
Send the exported GPX files to your phone and open in OSMAnd:as “Import GPX File”. For the passes let’s change the color to yellow. Click on the “Points” tab and select “…” to bring up the options.
Choose “Change default appearance” and select Yellow as the color for passes and Save. Villages appear red (default) and Mountain passes appear yellow on the map:
To show the route connecting our points we can set Configure Map – Overlay Map – Install More – Waymarked Trail Hiking:
Create a route
We can also create a route manually. Choose “Plan a Route” tool, Create new track:
Go to Options and Choose “Route between Points”. Change to “Walking”:
Starting from Stok you can now “Add” each in between point along the route. After your reach the end point Korzok, choose Options – Save as a new Track:
Metrics
Open the track and it will show the metrics for the full route – 218km and 8270m elevation gain. Click on the “Track” tab to show an elevation profile for the entire route. You can zoom into the profile to show individual sections.
You can see metrics for the individual passes / sections by enable Hiking Routes in Configure Map:
Labels for individual sections are now shown in white boxes on the map. Click on “KL” to bring up the nearby routes and select “Kichen La” to see the metrics for this specific section:
Points of interest
Search for “Camp site” and select “Camp site (Tourism)”, select Show on map to see all campsites along your planned route:
This is an easy way to plan your next campsite a few hours before sunset. Or you can Plan a route to check the distance between two subsequent campsites. Similarly you can overlay mountain passes and hamlets (food supply) along your hiking route:
Route profile
You can export your planned route by selecting it on the map (or in My Places) and Choose Options to Share the track back to your laptop:
Drag-n-drop the GPX file in nakarte.me to import it as a new Track. Select “…” and chose “Show Elevation Profile”:
This will bring up a full elevation profile for your planned route which can be reviewed in detail:
Navigation
While hiking we can navigate individual sections. For example select “Shang” as your first destination and click Navigate. Go back to the map and select Stok as starting point. Click Navigate again and now chose “Mark this the point of Departure”:
Chose “Walking” to navigate via hiking trails. This will automatically route from Stok to Shang via the trails and show metrics and elevation profile along the route.
Click Start to start navigating along the route:
