The World Below My Desk

Below my desk I have a bankers box full of maps I've collected over the years. These days I rarely open it, but recently, following the lead of my five-year-old son Kailash who was interested in a map I was showing him, I pulled out the box and we had a look together.

I am a firm believer in studying geography, and while there are definitely pockets of the world where I would probably fail miserably on a test (capital cities of Melanesia, principal rivers of the Baltic states), I have a modest understanding of where some places are on a world map.

Because I think geography is important (and interesting), long ago I posted a world map in the bathroom my son uses and so, ever since the earliest days of potty training, we have combined that activity with geography. As a result, at the tender age of five he can already easily locate Iceland, China, Senegal, Argentina, New Zealand, Pakistan, Canada and a dozen or more other countries on the map. He can find tiny Kauai on most world maps and, unlike some adults, he understands that Africa is a continent, not a country.

Wanting to foster and advance his knowledge of the world even as he is still mastering his ABCs, I took out the map box and showed him some of my maps. What I found delighted me because it reaffirmed my love of maps and appreciation for printed words and images.

The maps I've collected over the last two decades come from a wide range of places, many of which I have visited (San Francisco, Korea, Jerusalem) but others which I have not (Ireland, the West Indies, Bulgaria). Because of where I've lived for most of the last 19 years, I have a pretty large selection of maps from Japan and Hawaii.

These are useful if you want to navigate the Saddle Road, the Kalalau Trail or any place between Yonaguni-shima (Japan's southernmost island, just east of Taiwan) and Soya misaki (the northernmost point of Hokkaido). I've got several dozen variations of maps that show the trains and subways of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto and a small pocket-sized book from a 1994 planning diary that shows every single JR (Japan Rail) station on the country's four main islands in print so small and so crisp, even 15 years later it is entirely usable.

I also have a number of maps from the National Geographic Society. You may recall a time when every few issues National Geographic magazine included a large folding map with titles like "Historic Italy," "Everest 50" or "Middle East: Crossroads of Faith and Conflict." These are great maps. I don't think NG still puts maps in their magazines, but if you have any of these maps, you know how beautiful and useful they are.

Today I unfolded a 58cm x 58cm NG map entitled SOUTH ASIA with Afghanistan and Myanmar. With this map, on a single sheet of paper I can follow the roads and ridges from Mashhad in remote north-east Iran across Afghanistan, Pakistan's restive Frontier Province, over Kashmir and Ladakh, and east across the lake-pocked western Tibetan plateau all the way to Xining in Qinghai, then directly south to Phuket and Krabi in Thailand. From there I can drag my finger west over the Andaman Sea and Nicobar Islands, across the tear drop-shaped island of Ceylon and further west over the Maldives and Lakshadweep Islands. All that and dominating this beautiful blue, tan and green map is the Indian subcontinent with places like Rajasthan, Darjeeling, Punjab, the Western Ghats and Tirukalukundram.

The names alone bring me back to sleeping in a 2nd class berth on overnight train rides across the Gangetic plain, frightening bus journeys along winding mountain roads through langur monkey-filled pine forests, lonely, cold afternoons in British hill stations, dog bites in Varanasi, curfews in Calcutta and hitchhiking to Lhasa. The map is not obscure, but it captures one of the most incredible and diverse regions of the planet and includes the world's loftiest peaks and the lowest tropical islands.

Owing to several visits to Russia, I have a number of maps that illustrate that vast land. Because Russia is an unparralleled behemouth, a single map of the entire country by necessity includes everything between Finland, Georgia, Japan and Alaska. Just unfolding a map of the country gives one an appreciation for how enormous the country is.

During a 1996 visit I picked up two detailed maps of the Russian Far East -- one of Vladivostok and the other of the entire Primorskii Krai (region) in southeasternmost Russia. The latter is a beautiful piece of cartography, printed on rough, heavy paper that gives an indication of both time and place. The map has small tears around the edges and is yellowing, but still retains its greens, pinks, blues and blacks. Fine print at the bottom of the map indicates it reads MOCKBA (Moscow) 1990 and true to the era, has the letters "CCCP" on the bottom. If you are looking for the best border crossing into North Korea, this map will prove useful.

Later on that same trip, while on Sakhalin island (what the Japanese used to call Karafuto), I found a true cartographic gem. Holding it in my hand now, it's on that same low-quality paper as the Primorskii map, but this is a complete atlas (80 pages!) covering in great detail the entirety of Sakhalinskaya Oblast (the region of Sakhalin Island and the northern and southern Kuril Islands that arc between Hokkaido and Kamchatka. Published at 1:4300000, it is unlikely you will find a better geographic guide to Sakhalin, that fish-shaped island the size of Scotland that is moored off the southeast of Russia.

The maps in this "Topograficheskaya Karta" are so detailed that I can look on page 49 and find the exact spot where I camped with friends one warm, vodka-drenched August night in 1999. We were at a salt water lake called Ozero Tunaicha which is just east of the regional capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and seperated from the Sea of Okhotsk by a narrow strip of land. I don't refer to this atlas much these days, but when I need it, it's there.

Other maps in the box include a small garish depiction of Bulgaria (helpful for locating the Valley of the Roses!) and an attractive hand drawn postcard map of Bali that reveals the similarity in shape between the Island of the Gods and Maui, the Valley Isle. I have old photo copied maps of Nepal's Helambu district where I have drawn black circles indicating our route. Those black dots remind me that we walked from Pati Bhanjyang to Kutumsang in a single day. I probably would never have remembered it, but just reading the name "Kutumsang" brings back memories of the simple room where we stayed and the amazing Himalayan sunrise Hiroko and I enjoyed that April morning a dozen years ago.

I have a handy four-fold lamenated Gousha Fastmap of Seattle that helps me locate Port Orchard in relationship to Bremerton or find the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation at a glance.

Another favorite, easy-to-use map series is by Nelles Verlag - though I have just three: Southern India, North-Eastern China and Kauai. If you have never browsed a Nelles, check them out-- they are still commonly found in any place carrying maps, I think.

Also among my map collection is the simply labeled "UK Road Map" with the National and Alamao car rental logos at the bottom. The map is in near pristine condition and a joy to look at simply because the UK has such a complex and irresistably squiggly coastline. Besides, who doesn't delight in reading names like Swansea, Nottingham, Kirkcaldy and Dungannon? And did you know that you can drive from Lochboisdale in South Uist all the way up to Tigharry in North Uist? It really doesn't look that far at all.

Maps, like books, are incredible time pieces and can capture a sense of how a place was at a given past. Places are constantly changing, but a map remains frozen at a moment in time. My mother gave me a tourist map of the island of Kauai where I now live. The artwork on the map is cutesy and kitsch but irresistable to gaze upon with little hand-drawn rain clouds pouring onto Mt. Waialeale sending half a dozen cascades spilling over green mountains populated with hunters chasing pheasants, pigs and goats. The Kekaha Sugar mill is depicted as still in operation (it closed nearly a decade ago) as are the mills in Lihue, Kaumakani, Kalaheo and Koloa. The illustrated map is as charming as it is dated, but the year on the bottom of the map reveals it is only 32 years old- hardly an antique, but it will remain as a slice of how this place was perceived at one time.

Amongst all these maps, I have randomly kept various other bits of printed paraphernalia -- relics of places that complement the maps. Here is a ticket stub from Tenryuji, a zen garden in Kyoto, and beside it raised relief bumper sticker-sized depiction of some esoteric Hindu iconography associated with Lord Venkateswara (Bala-ji) which I must have picked up in Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh during a visit 11 years ago.

I've got old black and white or sepia photos from Ulan Bator and Kuala Lumpur, and a photo I took one morning in Mahabalipuram that shows a row of cleanly shaven Hindu pilgrims gazing in awe at the Bay of Bengal from the safety of water's edge. In a captured moment of action, one small child with a pink baseball cap appears to be trying to break away from his mother to get a closer look at the sea, but she is pulling him back from the waves.

Another photo in my map box is a studio portrait of me and Hiroko which we had taken in the spring of 1993 in the town of Hospet, south India. In the picture Hiroko is wearing a dark green sari and I have a simple piece of cloth draped over me. In the photo my face is freshly shaven because the photographer insisted I get a shave before he take our picture.

There are countless rail guides to London and Tokyo, perfectly preserved paper napkins from a European train with the word WARS printed on them, a large business card for Inn-Sung Do at 120 Nae Su-dong Jong Ro-ku in Seoul (a room was 10,000 won without a bath), a 1993 Amtrak rail schedule for the PIONEER from Chicago to Seattle (arrive at Pocatello at 17:50) and a well-preserved sticker showing a Winnie the Pooh look-a-like being carried aloft by balloons adversting Coffeeshop Pick Up The Pieces at Oude Hoogstr.5 in Amsterdam.

Postcards from Ghana, and Shiraz, and a complete series of 14 color cards depicting the Gandantegchinlen Monastery (courtesy of Zhuulchin Mongolian Tourist Organization) all remind me of places I have been or would like to go.

A small wallet-sized Heisei 10 (1998) calendar from Takahashi book store shows a beady-eyed chipmunk eating grass in a simpler, happier time. And in a real indication of how travel and the world have changed in recent years, I come across a pristine cardstock quality white envelope with the unmistakable winged hammer and sickle of AEROFLOT Soviet Airlines. Inside are two solid, sharp plastic color postcards with raised red border trim around two sharp images of iconic Moscow buildings, both with raised 3D surfaces. One card shows a historical building which I cannot identify, but it appears to be a government building, perhaps from the early 20th century. The second card is the Kremlin illuminated on a still winter night, complete with bright red stars and onion domes across a snow-dusted Red Square. I suppose these unusual cards were given as a simple passenger's souvenir and I must have received them on an Aeroflot flight I took from Heathrow to Moscow to Tashkent to Delhi (although it is hard to believe they would have survived the subsequent five months traveling in India in such good shape). Honestly, I can't remember how I got them, but they are a testament of just how far air travel has fallen. Not only would most airlines (certainly a major U.S. carrier not hand out souvenir postcards), today we are lucky if they will sell us a turkey sandwich.


And so back the Kremlin card goes, once again neatly tucked away into its little envelope. I slide it between Taiwan and the Taj Mahal. Folded up neatly into a single cardboard box, I've got the world (at least large parts of it) packed away smart. I keep these maps on file, for any time I want to revisit the world, remember the past, or plan for the future.

Like the memories they evoke, the maps are really slivers of another time, captured in ink on paper, folded and frayed, sometimes torn or in need of mending, but valuable, each and every one of them, not only as a way to understand where we're going or where we've been but, more importantly perhaps, where others are coming from.