Confession: My name is Ben and I’m a map nerd

Hi. My name is Ben and I’m a map nerd.

I just love maps. It’s an obsession. And I’m not even talking about the old-school romantic version of maps, the ones you can pick up, unfold and trace lines with your finger. Not the sort of maps you could frame on a wall or dedicate glorious hours of your day to refolding.

I love online maps. Maps where you’re a blue dot and the world moves around you with a flick or a pinch on a tiny screen. I love not so much the picture itself but knowing where I am, knowing where I’m going.

Illustration: Nathan Perri

This obsession begins before every journey, early in the planning stages, where I’m visualising where to go and logical ways to travel between destinations. I like to see where everything is, see the places I’ll visit or pass through.

It continues in the airport before my flight, where I’ll find myself idly opening Google Maps and tracing the route I think my plane will take, seeing the countries I will be soaring above, the oceans I’ll be crossing.

On board the plane I like watching movies and TV shows, but I also frequently check the flight path to see where we are, to think, oh right, so that’s where Tbilisi is, and wow, Vladivostok is all the way up there. And look at all those place names I’ve never even heard of. Look at all those cities full of people just going about their lives, doing things I’ve never seen, in places I will probably never visit.

I frequently check on the flight path map on planes to see exactly which places I’m passing over.Credit: Alamy

I always like to know where I am when I’m travelling. I don’t do this out of diligence or a sense of duty to my profession. I do it because I’m interested.

I should stop here for a second and assure you that I have never received payment of any kind from Google. I’m going to talk a lot about Google Maps, but that’s just because I really like Google Maps.

This is my go-to app when I’m travelling, one that’s pretty much always open. It’s open as I sit in the train or the bus or taxi from the airport to my accommodation, as I check it to see how everything in this new place fits together, what I’m going past, what I will be close to, what will remain far away.

It’s open once I get settled in too, as I do a quick search for restaurants so that I know the choices close by, what their ratings are, what’s likely to be good. I want to know what the surrounding suburbs are too, whether I recognise the names, how long it will take me to get there.

Can I walk? Is there a subway? Public buses? Could I ride a bike?

Any time I’m moving between cities, Google Maps will be open for the same reason, as I learn the names of the towns and villages I’m racing past, as I see what connects these two places, what the landmarks are, what the options are for travelling from here to there.

Ah, so that’s where Vladivostok is. Credit: Google Maps

I try not to map out exactly where I’m going to walk each day, though obviously my app could do that. You can take in a lot more of a place when you aren’t constantly checking your phone to ensure you’re on the fastest route possible.

Still, if I get a break I like to know where I’ve been, what that thing was I walked past, the direction I need to go to get to the next place.

All this, and I haven’t even gone full map nerd just yet. I don’t use Google Earth at all. I don’t sit at home scouring the globe for interesting geographical titbits. At least, not yet.

(I’m also a flag nerd. Do these things typically go together? I know all the flags. Even when I was a kid I was a stone-cold killer on Where in the World is Carman Sandiego? Oh, she took off flying a yellow and blue flag with a trident? Clearly going to Barbados.)

Mostly, for now at least, my map nerdery is dedicated purely to the travel experience. Where am I going? Where have I been? Where am I now? I’m endlessly interested in the way the world connects, with the options around me, with the names of places: cities, suburbs, even streets.

There’s no treatment for this obsession. You just have to indulge it.