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Sahyadri Trails

The Sahyadris are a lived landscape. People have walked these paths, climbed these ridges, rested on these plateaus, and carried their memory across centuries. Most encounters with the Sahyadris happen on foot: a narrow trail rising along a ridge, a forest thinning into open ground, a view that arrives only after sustained effort.

Yet maps of these trails remain fragmented. Many focus on navigation alone. Others turn technical or flatten the land into symbols. Most online maps reveal the landscape in pieces, asking the walker to zoom, scroll, and switch scales, seldom allowing the terrain to be seen as a whole.

Irshalgad

This project began with a simple question: What would a map look like if it was made for walkers; not just to reach a destination, but to understand the land they move through?

A physical map. Paper in hand. Folded, marked, returned to a pocket. Something tactile. Something grounded.

What These Maps Are

This project is a growing collection of trail-focused topographic maps of the Sahyadris, each centred on a single trek or trail system.

Each map brings together:

  1. Walking trails and access routes
  2. Terrain and elevation through contours and shaded relief
  3. Forest cover and vegetation density
  4. Natural features such as streams, lakes, ridges, plateaus, valleys, and escarpments

Rather than treating trails as thin lines on a background, the maps frame them as journeys through terrain. They show how the land rises, folds, flattens, and drops around the path. These are maps meant to be:

  1. Read at leisure
  2. Used for planning
  3. Looked at after a walk
  4. Put up on a wall, displayed and revisited

They do not offer turn-by-turn navigation. They offer orientation, understanding, and context.

















Why Make These Maps

People walk the Sahyadris intensely, yet detailed maps at walking scale remain rare. Most available maps fall into a few extremes:

  1. Technical survey maps that demand specialist reading
  2. Simplified digital maps that flatten terrain
  3. App-based maps that reveal only one section at a time

I wanted to work in the space between. These maps aim to:

  1. Preserve the character of the terrain
  2. Make elevation and slope legible at a glance
  3. Show how forests, plateaus, and paths relate to each other
  4. Respect the scale and rhythm of walking

In a region where oral knowledge and lived experience guide most treks, these maps support that knowledge rather than replace it.

How the Maps Are Made

Each map begins with terrain. High-quality elevation data forms the base. From this, contours and hillshade emerge to reveal form without overwhelming the page. Vegetation follows, derived from satellite imagery to show forest density and open ground. Trails and roads to prioritise paths relevant to walkers, not all available infrastructure.

A consistent projection and scale anchor every map so distances, slopes, and elevations retain meaning.

Design completes the process:

  1. Reduce visual noise
  2. Use colour with intent; some elements recede, others assert
  3. Shape labels to guide reading, not compete for attention
What These Maps Are Not

These maps are not:

  1. GPS replacements
  2. Real-time navigation aids
  3. Guarantees of trail conditions

Trails change. Forests change. Access evolves.

Instead, the maps provide a stable spatial framework. They help walkers understand their position within ridges, valleys, forests, and plateaus, even when the path itself fades.

Using the Maps

You might use these maps to:

  1. Plan a trek and read its terrain before setting out
  2. Compare routes to the same summit or plateau
  3. Revisit a walk already completed
  4. Understand how Sahyadri forts and hills relate spatially
  5. Study and appreciate the structure of the landscape

Printed, they function as reference pieces. Over time, they become records of movement through place.

An Ongoing Series

This project remains open.

The Sahyadris stretch wide, and each trail reveals something distinct: basalt faces, forest traverses, exposed plateaus, water-cut valleys.

New maps will continue to join the series, each shaped by:

  1. A specific trail or cluster of trails
  2. A consistent visual language
  3. Careful attribution to open data sources

Over time, the aim is to build a coherent atlas of Sahyadri walking routes, one trail at a time.

Acknowledgements

These maps rely on open datasets and communities that believe access to landscape knowledge matters. Each map includes detailed data credits and attributions.

The design, interpretation, and composition of the maps are my own.