Pilani is my college town set in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan, India. With a population of less than 30,000, it’s one of the more quieter towns of the North. Being close to the desert, the weather here gets pretty wild: from summers rising up to a scorching 50 degrees Celsius, to frozen winters with the mercury hitting sub-zero.

In the middle of this quiet desert town is BITS Pilani – a bustling engineering and science institute established in mid-60s. Between 2009 and 2014, I spent my time here, working through my engineering degree.

The first thing anyone would notice about BITS is it’s beautifully designed campus. A clear visual line runs across the center, starting from the BITS tower up to the Saraswati temple. Low rise buildings on the side serve as hostels, academic buildings, libraries and student workshops. A circular rotunda below the tower leads to the new constructed academic buildings (built below the ground level to conserve space). Trees of various sorts line up the roads and gardens. Over 100 different species of birds make the campus their home.

Photo credit: Alok Pacholi

Before I started mapping, the buildings and roads within the campus had already been pretty well mapped by maheshrkm. So I focused on adding more detail to some of the landmarks within the campus and tracing the surrounding town.

The town itself, though small, is pretty dense. It’s tight, winding streets and crowded clusters of buildings make the tracing difficult. I added some major roads, buildings, water bodies, and local points of interest like temples and bus stands.

Here’s a screenshot of some my edits:

My favourite part by far has been tracing Shiv Ganga. It’s a beautifully designed circular lawn surrounded by a canal. The lawn is built out of circular sectors, has a statue of the deity Shiva and a footpath.

It renders beautifully as a 3D map in F4map’s demo.

Being my first mapping experience, this has been pretty enjoyable. A special thanks to planemad for improving some of my edits. If you have any feedback or corrections for me, please feel free to leave me a comment. Thanks!