A typical living_street in Bangalore.

It’s been a couple of months since I moved to Bangalore. Naturally, with a new neighborhood comes an opportunity to map and improve the data! When I first came to this side of the city, OSM coverage was fairly good. Streets were marked and buildings were traced, but no other detail was there. It lacked street names, POIs and neighborhood names. So during my daily commute, I try to add a few details to make it much more updated and useful.

Mapping a totally different place comes with challenges that break many of your assumptions. Here’s a few things I found amusing, interesting and at times confusing as I navigated around this Indian city.

Colours everywhere

Everywhere you go, you see colours. From the temples, to the rangolis, to how vegetables are stacked like a treemap infographic. It seems that colour defines the city’s daily lives.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:shop=ironingshop?

The last time I saw a working charcoal iron was when my grandmother was using it. Here, there are roadside shops in carts that iron your clothes while you wait.

Different beliefs can always get along

Roadside place_of_worship, left-side: Jesus and Mary, right-side: Lord Shiva.

Chai shops everywhere

You don’t need to worry about refreshments, chai shops are everywhere. This one even sells fresh coconuts.

Signs maybe confusing

This got me confused for a while, it turned out, not all hotels in India are for sleeping. They are eating hotels (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity=fast_food) NOT sleeping hotels (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:tourism=hotel)!

There are exceptions to the rule!

Just as when I’m getting used to cycling on the left hand side, I stumbled into Commissariat. I initially thought the data was wrong but apparently, you drive on right at Commissariat.

Mapping is still a work in progress, I don’t have much of a plan. In my free time, I simply walk and mark anything I find. But the map is now beyond just streets and buildings. Check it out and let me know what’s missing.

Emojimap.net