India City Street Maps

Hi
I read the advice in a guide book of Kolkata to take maps with you rather than relying on buying maps when you arrive. Well I have searched the internet and I have ordered maps of Kolkata, Delhi and the Golden Triangle from Amazon, but that is it. can anyone advise of any sites that have maps of Jodhpur, Khajuraho, Varanasi, or Dhaka (it's almost in India), preferably UK sites as I don't want to get things sent from the US if I can help it.
Thanks







Mod note: thread moved to the India Maps forum.

The digital world has taken over. The best city maps I have seen are the Eicher series: produced, printed, publish and, of course, sold in India. However, If you have access to any sort of digital device to display it, Google Maps is now much easier to use.

If you have a suitable Nokia phone, then download the Nokia maps for India.

We have a forum for map discussion, paper and digital.

Google maps is very good in terms of streets but be warned that it is sometimes inaccurate in its placement of restaurants and such. It's usually good with major hotels and sights, though.

Bit of an understatement, what?

Still, we've found Google maps useful in getting an overview of a town. They're often especially good in the satellite mode, because you can so easily pick out useful landmarks.

I tried to find something on maps in the forums before i posted but a search of maps for the site returned nothing. I have everywhere we are going plotted out on a googel map but when I am out and about I still prefer good old fashioned paper (this is probably me showing my age)! Thanks anyway.

Even as we speak, we are printing out Google maps, with annotations we've added via Microsoft Word, for an upcoming trip along the Hooghly. We hope to stop at a few comparatively obscure places that the driver might not know. But he certainly will once we've guided him in with our printouts of maps and satellite images.

We're also printing out annotated satellite images of the Mehrauli Archaeological Trail near Delhi for our own use. All the paper maps we've found take extraordinary liberties with accurate placement of the monuments, and we reckon we'll do better following satellite pictures.

We understand your love of good old fashioned paper, and that's what we'll be using. It's just that we find it most practical to print our own!

Stanfords sell the TTK range of street maps via mail order from within the UK. They were able to send me a road map of Chandigarh within two days of my order, so worth trying to see if they have Jodphur, Varanasi etc. They will cost a bit more than the INR 100 cover price though!

Thanks for that. I have just purchased a map of Varanasi and a map of Rajestan that includes a plan of Jodhpur.

Try Eicher when you get here. Not sure if the places you want the maps for are covered by them, you can check on the website.

You can also buy TTK and some other map series of individual states and popular tourist cities and towns at any bookshop in India. They are cheap and cheerful and useful enough.

Just how many Indian cities are like Calcutta/Kolkata - for a huge number of absolutely understandable reasons, in Calcutta/Kolkata NOBODY has been able to finance any sort of reliable geophysical survey for decades, so all new "street maps" are just based on really, really old "street maps". Recent years of spectacular growth in many cities have rendered all old street maps marginally useful at best. To make matters worse, the re-naming of towns, districts, localities and streets by jumped-up hick saffron-necked politicians, the recolonisation of whole areas by new populations, the lack of finance for new street signs, the employment of fresh-out-of-the-village-yesterday taxidrivers and the resultant rejection of long-established names has added to the uselessness of most printed maps. Take your iPhone and buy data. It's all an adventure, get used to it.

I would think that the same is true of all the metros, but certainly, for my city, Eicher maps were magnitudes better (can one say that? ) than all previous stuff like TTK. I don't know where they got the data, but they did it.

Even though, these days, I rely heavily on Google Maps and in-my-pocket navigation/mapping, I still would not be without my Eicher Chennai City Map in the car. Actually, I have two: one for house, one for car! It must be five years out of date now, which means there's a flyover or six missing, and one-way systems may well be wrong, but it still gives me a lot of help in find stuff from small lanes to individual office complexes.

get a GPS that can use regular AA batteries so you always have power. And you can freely download openstreetmaps in garmin format, that is what I use and it works fine.

I am looking a city map of Kannur. Does anyone know of a site I could buy one off of? I've been looking for information all over and I'm finding getting any kind of travel information about Kannur is very difficult. I would like to buy my maps ahead of time so I can get an idea of the city, map out where I need to go etc. I'll be flying into Chennai and then either busing or catching a train to Kannur so I'm looking for a map of Chennai, India and Kannur. Any suggestions?

Google maps may be the best you'll get.

For Chennai,,if you want something paper-bases, the Eicher City Map book is very good, but even the latest edition is missing new flyovers and stuff.

That's too bad but thanks