Australia & New Zealand Outdoor Adventure Forum

With current GPS trekking devices and apps available in your phone the losing your way has become matter of fast. However, in most cases when I lost my way was in hilly terrain where there were no signals available or I hadn't visited the places before. My recent most such case was in Himachal Pradesh last year when I was on a trekking mission with one my regular friends. But we missed a turn a landed in a distant valley. We had to stay there in village head's house overnight.

Ray1 wrote:With current GPS trekking devices and apps available in your phone the losing your way has become matter of fast. However, in most cases when I lost my way was in hilly terrain where there were no signals available or I hadn't visited the places before. My recent most such case was in Himachal Pradesh last year when I was on a trekking mission with one my regular friends. But we missed a turn a landed in a distant valley. We had to stay there in village head's house overnight.

Same goes for me. Yes GPS works best, but what if we don't have mobile signal. I know one off line gps application too where we have to pre install the maps on our mobile and we can use that gps even without internet or mobile signal. Even Google maps now providing offline mode. Though I have never used it. So such kind of app can be useful even though we don't have mobile signal.

I would be so stressed out as I always like to plan out my trips or hikes. If I don't know the way which I usually don't, I have to have someone with me with experience. I don't think I could ever go alone on any of those kinds of adventures. I have gotten lost before because I am not good with direction but I was fortunate to find some help in the way, after that day I never went far from home alone again.

One thing I am always careful with is never to miss my way whenever I go camping or trekking extensively in destinations that are not familiar to me. To ensure that I don't get difficulty finding my way out I always mark or look for prominent features to mark my axis while I trek or walk farther inside the new place.

I once went camping with a friend in a forest. It was fun until in the evening we forgot where we had kept our belongings. We frantically searched for hours. During that time, she would hear a sound and quickly hold me. I would reassure her that all was well. I was scared too but I did not want to show. We could not wait till daybreak because our sleeping bags were with our belongings. After going in circles for a while, we found everything. I promised myself to always be keen and never get late especially in a forest. We had fun for the remaining part of our camp.