Route planning before a tour, as well as navigation during the trip, are two essential components for a successful experience. Even if the journey itself is the goal 😉
1. Countries – In advance of planning
First of all, you should inquire a little about the countries you want to visit. If you haven’t already done that anyway, I advise you to do it now at the latest.
Books, travel magazines, documentaries or travel and vacation reports from friends and acquaintances can help, just to name a few.
So slowly you should now have a rough idea of ​​where you should end up.
If you are in the fortunate position of being able to choose your own travel time (most of them do not work because of social obligations such as studying or school), now the moment has come to get information about the climate. Is it too cold, far too hot or does it rain all the time? You can already see what I’m getting at.
1.1 For on the go:
Map material: In order to keep your orientation on the go and to be able to continue planning flexibly at any time, you need good map material first. For all countries and sections you have to travel to, you have to make yourself known in advance where you can get which cards and whether you might even have to order them. Please note the map scales. If the map is not detailed enough, but you also like to drive down small loading streets and slopes, you can often no longer help you very quickly. If the scale is too big, it can quickly become annoying if you have to take the map out of the tank bag every 30 km to fold it again and insert it.
I personally recommend the maps from Reise Know How -world mapping project. These are tear and waterproof, which is a huge advantage, especially for motorcyclists.
1.2 GPS:
In addition to the conventional map material, I now always have a GPS system with me. This can often be helpful when you say goodbye to the common paths and routes and then suddenly you can no longer find yourself on the map. In that case, I usually orientate myself according to the direction of the compass, thus deciding whether „right or left“ and sooner or later I usually find myself back on the right path. A GPS also helps if you have to find your way in foreign cities, for example. It is not uncommon for you to be unable to read a word, and you often have to contend with traffic on the side. A device that shows you the right direction can be worth gold.
I recommend getting to grips with open source maps. These are not only free, but nowadays they are often more extensive and, above all, more up-to-date.
Overnight stays: For me there are always three options. Forest camping, campsite or guesthouse. Popularity is the same as the order. However, it is not always possible to find a nice place to camp in the wild, just as you don’t necessarily find a nice campsite in big cities, for example. Then it is often helpful if you have at least one two guest houses in or near the respective location. There is hardly anything more exhausting than driving around in a strange city after a long, exhausting day in the hope of finding something nice quickly.
However, in order not to have to carry loads of Lonely Planets etc. with you, I recommend that you compile a small overview of overnight accommodations in advance of the countries and cities visited. You are also welcome to take a look at travel forums, you can find one or the other great tip there.
2. Routing, tracks & GPS
2.1. The map material
Here I describe the procedure to be able to plan a tour in advance.
For Garmin devices, the first thing you have to do is get the right maps. Open source maps are free for everyone and are kept up to date. You can put together routable maps yourself and then use them very easily.
You can find my favorite way of putting your cards together HERE
Then download the selected map as an .img file and copy it directly to the memory card of the GPS device. Done and you already have a free routable map on your navigation device!
1.2. Plan a route from home
If you want to plan your tour in advance – for example on your computer at home – you can do it very easily with free software. Certainly there are many different ways to get there, so I’ll just describe a variant with which I get along well.
MOTOPLANER.DE is good site on which you can plan your tour online on your computer. If you have set your waypoints on one of the two sides and have finished planning your various stages, you now have to export the tour. To do this, please download / export the respective route as a .gpx file.
Since the .gpx files cannot be copied directly to the GPS device, an intermediate step via Mapsource is necessary. You also get one of the first mapsource programs on the Internet free of charge. If you have this on your computer, you can easily update it to the latest version.
If you now have mapsource on your computer, you have to import the .gpx file to mapsource.
Now connect the GPS to the computer and simply send the respective route from mapsource to the device.
Complete.
2.2. Evaluate the tour recording and send it to Google Maps
If you have recorded tracks and waypoints during a tour, you can now evaluate them on the computer at home. The whole thing is a little more complicated than planning in advance, but it also works quite well.
3.1 With Google Earth as a utility
– Read out tracks and waypoints from the GPS device with the help of Mapsource.
– Send read-out tracks, routes and waypoints from mapsource direct to Google Earth. (View menu item, then show it in Google Earth. – To do this, update mapsource to the latest version beforehand)
– in google earth then click on save as, and save the routes, tracks and waypoints as .kmz files.
– This kmz. file can now be uploaded directly to google maps, where the waypoints etc. are displayed again.
3.2 With GPS-Babel as an auxiliary program
– Read out tracks and waypoints from the GPS device with the help of Mapsource.
– then export / save the data from Mapsource as a .gpx file.
– Now convert the .gpx file into a .kmz file with the help of GPS-Babel.
– This kmz. file can now be uploaded directly to google maps, where the waypoints etc. are displayed again.
I hope I was able to help you a little further with this brief explanation.
Have fun planning, driving and evaluating in the future!
The more detailed your planning, the more likely it is that things will unfold differently than you expected.
Marc wibbels