Finding your way to where you want to go, back home again, and having fun while doing it, are important elements of successful off-roading. Below are some guidelines for navigating your way from A to B and back again.
Compass
A compass makes navigating open terrain easy, especially when used with a good map. A prismatic compass is recommended as it has a sight for taking more accurate bearings. Bearings are taken clockwise with magnetic north as 0° and south as 180° opposite north.
Wristwatch
If you do not have a compass, true north can be determined with an analogue wristwatch. Point the hour hand towards the sun, then divide the angle between the sun and the direction of 12 on the watch dial – this is south.
Sun
It rises in the east and sets in the west.
Sundial
During the day, the passage of the sun across the sky can be recorded by placing a stick upright in the sand and tracing the shadow at regular intervals. If you join the end of the shadow made at two different times, then the line will be in a west to east direction, with west being the first shadow and east the second. Drawing a line at 90° to this line forms the north-south line.
Stars
You can impress everyone with your knowledge of the night sky, and figure out which way is north, by looking up at the stars. In Saudi Arabia, north is indicated by the Pole Star. The two lowest stars of the Plough or Great Bear point towards the Pole Star, which is about four times the distance between the two stars away.
GPS
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have been in operation since the 1980s and are now the primary navigation aids for terrestrial, aeronautical and marine transport applications.
A handheld, stand-alone GPS receiver can plot positions as you are moving, record waypoints, plot a continuous route and allow you to track back along that route.
Most smartphones these days also come equipped with GPS, and serve as a useful tool for navigating your route or working out where you’ve ended up. They will also send your location to a contact through a messaging platform, although these can be unreliable in poor signal areas so you should always have a back-up option.
Most GPS receivers can display your position in various coordinates, for example in latitude and longitude or using the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) system. Many countries have their own unique coordinate system applied to their mapping so, when using a GPS receiver, make sure that the coordinates shown on the screen match the map system that you’re using.
The map pages in this guide feature a geographic grid, showing latitude and longitude coordinates, in the format of decimal degrees. If you’re in trouble and need to communicate your location using GPS coordinates, give the latitude coordinate first (N), followed by longitude (E).
Smartphone
Navigation has been made easier by smartphones in a number of ways. If you have a local SIM card, you’d be surprised at where you can get service, although a real GPS device makes a useful back-up.
We’ve included QR codes for easy navigation to the starting point of each route. You’ll need to download a QR code scanner app, then simply scan the code and open the location in the Al Dalila app, or your maps app.
Other applications have been developed that can enhance your off-roading, including Google Earth, which will show you the terrain around you and help you identify paths and where they lead.
