Some people get sucked in to reality television. Me, I see a map and will zone out on it for hours. I love maps!

Mark Ovenden assembled a book that contains maps of every urban train system in the world. Subway geeks will love it. And plain old map geeks like me as well. Older systems with more history get more pages and a series of maps that show the changing styles of the maps as well as the expansion of the systems. Newer ones get fewer pages. The newest, including ones that are only in the planning stages, get thumbnails. But it’s pretty complete.

It’s not just a collection of maps. The author is a graphic designer (a.k.a. commercial artist) as well as a subway geek. His text gives a history of metro systems (of which I am still not sure what the exact definition is), as well as a history of the design concepts that go in to the diagrams. Because some of them, the majority of them, are maps only in the loosest sense. Surface areas, topographic features, and most of what resembles the landscape are removed entirely. The train lines themselves only generally indicate physical features. If done to scale, these diagrams would waste space in suburbs and mush everything together in urban cores, making them unreadable. The London Tube map is a classic example.

Nevertheless, I prefer the more map-like representations. If I lived in the metro area, I would know where most of the locations really are. Most important to me would be the connections to get from one place to another. As a non-resident, I might have more concern with whether I end up close to important destinations. I’ll admit though that my own personal interest lies in the features and how they are geographically related. The diagrams strip out most of what I care about. I like the New York City subway map better. The author makes clear his preference for the former though.

Title: Transit maps of the world
Previous title: Metro maps of the world
Author: Mark Ovenden
Editor: Mike Ashworth
Imprint / publisher: Penguin
Format: Paperback
Length: 144 p. (includes index)
Publication date: October 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-14-311265-5
Subject: Subways — History — Maps
Subject: Local transit — History — Maps
Subject: Railroads — History — Maps
LC classification: G1046.P33 O9 2007

I spent the last week driving down the Oregon coast. My nominal destination was Redwood National Park in northern California. I realized I had a week of nothing planned, and I’d never been to the redwoods before, so I packed up some stuff and took off. Let me tell you, the Oregon coast is gorgeous. As far as scenery goes, it ranks up there with the South Island of New Zealand and the northern shore of Lake Superior. Truly spectacular. I’ll be using a review of one of the guidebooks on Oregon to talk about that portion.

Anyway, I got to Redwood National Park and spent a day and a half traipsing around the area. First thing I found out is that Redwood National Park isn’t really the best place for redwoods. The nearby state parks are older and better developed. I didn’t have extensive time for hiking, but I also don’t like the canned photo-op spots either. I spotted this book in the visitor center and had my solution. Shorter than day hikes, I could follow the routes in the book and still get in the sense of nature that I enjoy.

The authors list 64 short hikes in five different parks. Looking at the handy guide, I selected three from the category hikes in old growth redwoods. First I walked on was the Lady Bird Johnson loop. This 1.3 mile walk circles the site of the dedication of Redwood National Park in the late 1960s, attended by Lady Bird Johnson. The area, well it looks like Endor from Return of the Jedi.

The second hike I took was to Trillium Falls. I picked it because I love waterfalls. Now, the book calls this a small waterfall. The Rohdes were being generous. It’s just a bit of a brook falling over some rocks. Not even a creek. Still, it looks pretty. But then I noticed something. In the upper right of the waterfall it looked like the water was coming out of the rock itself. So I zoomed in with the camera (pic). Hmm … A piece of white pipe? Yup. It doesn’t even appear that the waterfall is natural.

The last hike I picked was the Cathedral Trees-Big Tree-Foothill Trail loop in Prairie Creek State Park. This was a nice walk. The trail dips in and out of a meadow before plunging into the forest where the cathedral trees actually are. Elk often forage in the meadow, but that’s normally in spring. Nevertheless, I nearly bumped into one just as the trail headed into the forest for good. I had to take a step back and in fact back up as the elk headed down the trail toward me. I got to watch it scrape a small tree with its antlers, and pick the bark off. Must have been tasty. The Big Tree was certainly impressive. All in all the best of the three walks I picked.

I wish I had more time to try out some of the other hikes listed. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to return. The guide was invaluable to figuring out what I could do while on a short trip.

Title: Best short hikes in Redwood National and State parks
Author: Jerry Rohde, Gisela Rohde
Series: Best short hikes
Imprint / publisher: Mountaineers
Format: Paperback
Length: 237 p. (includes index)
Publication date: January 2005
ISBN-10: 0-89886-716-9
Subject: Hiking — California, Northern — Guidebooks
Subject: Hiking — Redwood Natinal Park — Guidebooks
Subject: California, Northern — Guidebooks
Subject: Redwood National Park (Calif.) — Guidebooks
LC classification: GV199.42.C2R64 2004

• The file Lady Bird Johnson Loop.JPG identified by urn:sha1:6QC6AGZ4Q4MXEWDRWENTH3S3TYWKH5TA is licensed to the public under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.
• The file Trillium Falls.jpg identified by urn:sha1:X7CFL2YMOIY2E4E6JPMR2MMPELMQM77K is licensed to the public under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.
• The file Trillium Falls Closeup.jpg identified by urn:sha1:LSZOEUJDWHD26IEW5OSQDVPQHE6EMDF3 is licensed to the public under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.
• The file Elk on Cathedral Trees Trail.jpg identified by urn:sha1:QW2BJX4VY3MCQFBP6QS7IL75MIEBUB7P is licensed to the public under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.

I’ve had this road atlas for a while, and I occasionally pull it out for various reasons. The second most common reason is that I am reading a book that references specific places and I want to get an idea of the geography of the area. That’s why I pulled it out this time. I am reading Cannery Village (review to come shortly) and it referenced a number of places on the coast of British Columbia. Sadly, despite my prodigious geographic knowledge and living in close proximity to British Columbia, I know very little of the geography of it’s coastline. Of course, it’s mostly roadless, so my only visits there have been to Tofino and in a cruise ship alone the coast. A cruise trip where I put my head down and read books rather than follow the map on the television screens. So in reading the descriptions of the coast in Cannery Village I was obliged to look at a map. Alas, being that this is a road atlas and the places described are in roadless areas, and additionally are mostly long gone places, I was able to find only one or two of the locations. I’ve had better luck other times. Part of the reason is that the book focuses on the Skeena and Nass river systems, both of which are very far north on the coast, and the B.C. map in this atlas stops somewhat further south than Prince Rupert.

The primary reason I peruse this atlas though is to just wander. Sometimes I’m thinking of visiting places. Sometimes I just want to see how the puzzle pieces all fit together. Do the people in place A go to place B? They might, it’s only 5 miles away! But more likely, I’m just staring in rapture following the geography from one place to another. Maps just look beautiful to me. I imagine this is what the art buffs do when they go see the Mona Lisa. Look how exquisitely the smile is upturned right there! That’s what I do with maps. It doesn’t really matter the kind, road or topographical or political or whatever. I love most all of them. I have a box filled with all the maps I get my hands on (outside the couple of atlases I own).

These days, it’s rare that I would plan any travel using a map in paper form. Google Maps is so much better for getting maps for where I will be going. It’s directions are pretty dang good. It’s A.A.A.’s TripTik’s on steroids. But a road atlas like this is nice to bring along for those meandering aimless road trips. I also like to take a highlighter and mark the roads and places I’ve visited. In fact, that specific reason is why I purchased this road atlas. I had another one, but it went missing at one point, along with all the highlights for places I’d visited. So I had to re-mark this one from memory. I realized only last night that I messed up in a couple of places. On my 1997 Canada road trip, I went to Drumheller, and took a spur of Canada 1 near the Lake of the Woods, both of which I missed when I re-did it a couple of years ago. Ah well.

Title: Rand McNally 2002 Road Atlas: United States, Canada, Mexico
Publisher: Rand McNally
Format: Paperback
Publication date: September 2001
Length: 138 p.
ISBN-10: 0-528-84431-8
Subject: Roads — United States — Maps
Subject: Roads — Canada — Maps
Subject: Roads — Mexico — Maps

It’s hard to classify Ted Rall’s new book, Silk Road To Ruin. The subject is clear: the central Asian countries ending in -stan. But the presentation doesn’t fit one single format. Part of the book is travel writing; Rall has made at least five trips to the region and each trip gets some coverage here. But another part of the book is a state of the region overview of each country, as well as a couple of chapters on the environment and geopolitical context. Not only that, sprinkled liberally throughout are some of Rall’s editorial cartoons and short graphical stories about the region and his trips. The local Barnes & Noble classifies this as current events but no single category seems sufficient to me.

My own knowledge of the region comprising Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur (Uighur) Autonomous Region of China is pretty limited. There was a Kyrgyz student at the University of Idaho in 1994-1995 that I knew. I know that Tashkent was at one point a sister city to Seattle, though I have no idea if that relationship continues today. I’ve heard the names of each of the local dictators at one point or another. There are a few other random facts I probably knew. But all in all, pretty limited.

Nevertheless, my attention is drawn to this area. I’ve had a fascination with trying to learn about lesser known areas of the world for a long time. Let other people visit France, England, Ireland, Italy and the other forebears of American civilization. I want to see India, South Africa, and central Asia, among other destinations. I’m not a glutton for punishment. I’ll not likely go to central Asia anytime soon. But I want to know what’s there.

Central Asia will be geopolitically important for some time, despite the relative lack of prominence in American news. Several countries in the region sit on substantial oil and natural gas fields. The others sit on the landlocked routes that pipelines must take out of the region. And if you look at a map of the region, there’s a relatively small area where most of these countries tangle together spaghetti-like just north of Afghanistan. A determined insurgent group can cause havoc in all of these countries easily by gaining a foothold in this small region. And some do.

Ted Rall writes about the politics of the region, not just the geo-politics. You’ll get the meet the strongmen of each country. None of them are ruled by governments selected by truly free and fair elections. The closest is Afghanistan, and until 2005, Kyrgyzstan. Rall introduces folks to Sapamurat Turkmenbashi Niyazov, late (as of December 2006) of Turkmenistan, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Sharipovich Rakhmonov of Tajikistan, and Nursaltan Nazabayev of Kazakhstan. Of these, Karimov in Uzbekistan is particularly brutal. He personally ordered and monitored a crackdown on a demonstration that resulted in nearly 1,000 deaths by conservative estimates. The massacre received only minimal coverage in the West and only minimal protest by our supposedly attentive-to-human-rights governments. The U.S. in particular made polite paper protests so as not to disturb the use of Uzbekistan territory for Afghanistan military operations. Unfortunately for us, even that was too much and Uzbekistan terminated our use of a base on their soil. According to Rall, we are to be out of there by this month. I haven’t kept up on the latest developments, so I don’t know if Uzbekistan followed through on the eviction.

Nevertheless, we’re botching the job in those countries according to Rall. We’re not really making the dictators happy. And we’ve lost the substantial support we used to have among the peoples of central Asia. Rall predicts a powderkeg and we’ll have little influence when it blows.

Despite the attention to the geopolitical, Rall also includes a lot of travel writing. He includes a detailed set of recommendations on how to negotiate military checkpoints, set up mostly for the purpose of shaking down travelers. Foreigners with wads of cash often get the worst of these hassles: robbed, raped, and stranded miles from nowhere. Sometimes it results in even worse treatment. He also describes in detail some of the sporting events the locals play. Particularly, I liked his chapter on and descriptions of buzkashi, a vaguely polo-like sport where horsemen carry a dead goat to a goal area. There are no real teams though, and almost anything is fair game to get the player carrying the goat to drop it. Whipping your opponents horse? Go for it. Blinding your opponent (permanently)? That’s allowed! Using your whip to bloody or remove the ear of an opponent? Not a bad strategy at all. Shooting an AK-47 at the other horses or riders? It’s considered unsporting but technically allowed. People die in the games and people are frequently hurt seriously. But the winners can walk away with carpets, cars and even goats. Horsemen from multiple countries travel for these competitions.

Another slightly less bloody but no less brutal sport is kyzku. In this game, men chase a woman and try to kiss her. If one manages to do so, he wins the right to marry her, and there are even occasionally tents set up for consummating such marriages on the edge of the field. Now, this sounds fairly sexist at first, but after reading you will likely change your mind. First of all, the game takes place on horseback. That makes kissing much tougher. Second, the woman rider may use any and all means at her disposal to prevent kissing attempts. Unwanted men frequently come away bloodied and maimed from this game. Rall writes of one woman who had fended off 100+ attempts in a row over the years. The men come out of this much the worse for wear! Coincidentally, I read this book in a coffee house in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood. A man sitting in the chair next to me saw the title and asked if it was about central Asia. He’d spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan. So when I reached this part of the book, I asked him if he’d witnessed this sport. He said he had and that it was quite amazing. However, he did say that most kyzku bouts are pre-planned these days. The men don’t enter the arena if they don’t have an idea that the female competitor will let them have their kiss. I suppose that takes a bit of the excitement away for random spectators, but it’s still a hell of a way to effect a proposal. You might think she’ll say yes, but if not you get much worse than a slap in the face! That’s a hell of a risk and in a way, I think a lot more romantic than getting on one knee in a swanky Italian restaurant in a posh urban neighborhood.

Title: Silk road to ruin: is central Asia the new middle east?
Author: Ted Rall
Imprint / publisher: NBM Publishing
Publication date: August 2006
Format: Hardcover (9.3 in. x 6.4 in.)
Length: 304 p., including bibliography
ISBN-10: 1-56163-454-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-56163-454-5
Subject: Rall, Ted — Travel
Subject: Asia, Central — History — 1991- — Comic books, strips, etc.
Subject: Asia, Central — Economic conditions — 1991- — Comic books, strips, etc.
Subject: Asia, Central — Politics and government — 1991- — Comic books, strips, etc.
Subject: Asia, Central — Description and travel — Comic books, strips, etc.
LC Classification: PN6727.R35 S56 2006

The Royal Palaces of India is a glorified coffee table book on the subject. Though better. A lot of history and anthropology of Indian culture is included, though mostly about the various rulers of India since 1300. And of course, they only cover things connected to the palaces, not other history or culture. Still, learning the layout and influences was cool. And the pictures are gorgeous. A number of the ones featured are on my itinerary to India in November. Unfortunately, I don’t get to keep the book; it was on loan from a co-worker. Otherwise I would probably have gone back to it again and again prior to my India trip.

Title: The royal palaces of India
Author: George Michell
Photographer: Antonio Martinelli
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Length: 232 p.
ISBN-10: 0-500-27964-0
Subject: Palaces — India
Subject: Architecture — India
Subject: Historic buildings — India
Subject: India — Kings and rulers — Homes and haunts
LC classification: NA1501 .M54 1994

I bought three travel guides for my trip to India last year. Two were Lonely Planet books, and then there was this one. Published by DK as part of their Eyewitness Travel Guides series, the cover promises The Guides That Show You What Others Only Tell You. In other words, there’s a lot more pictures here, and they are in color. Sadly, reality never really lives up to the pretty pictures you can find in travel guides. They have their pick of shots, and take the ones that show everything in their best light. This isn’t to say that India isn’t beautiful, but no place looks as good as it does in pictures all the time. That being said, this is a great book for getting you excited about travelling to the Golden Triangle. And if you are good at setting your expectations despite a good sell job, this books points out where you can find some really beautiful things.

What it doesn’t do is point out any of the pitfalls, and there are many in India. Oh, it tells you to negotiate your fare up front with the auto-rickshaws, but doesn’t point out which attractions you really want to see, and which ones really aren’t all that. For instance, the guide describes the Samode palace in glowing terms. But after a two hour drive, Samode palace is barely bigger than my apartment building and there are only a couple of spots worth viewing now that most of the place has been turned into a hotel. I enjoyed the experience, but didn’t come away with the sense of awe this guide imparts.

About the only thing I really like about the guide is that for major attractions it contains a 3-D cut away view of the location rather than just a flat map. On top of that the points of interest within the attraction are helpfully located. I got a better feel for places with that than I did with regular outline maps found in other guides such as Lonely Planet.

In the end, I left this book at home when I boarded the plane. I figured I would take my own pretty pictures and I required more practical advice on the road.

Authors: Anuradha Chaturvedi, Dharmendar Kanwar, Ranjana Sengupta
Title: Delhi Agra & Jaipur
Publisher: DK
Series: Eyewitness Travel Guides
Length: 320 p.
ISBN-10: 0-7894-9717-4
Subject: Delhi (India) — Guidebooks
Subject: Agra (India) — Guidebooks
Subject: Jaipur (India) — Guidebooks
LC classification: DS486.D3 D365 2003