Where's Wal. . .um, Sharon?

I play a computer "game" — for lack of a better descriptive word — called GeoGuessr (sic). It's a geography game — well, it's described this way on Wikipedia:

"GeoGuessr is a web-based geographic discovery game designed by Anton Wallén, a Swedish IT consultant, released on 9 May 2013. The game uses a semi-randomized Google Street View location and requires players to guess their location in the world using only the clues visible. . . The Street View window of GeoGuessr does not provide any information beyond the street view images; things such as road signs, vegetation, businesses, climate, and landmarks have been suggested as some clues that may help the player determine their location. The player may also move about along the roads through the normal directional controls provided by Street View. Once the player is ready to guess the location, they will place a location marker on a zoom-able Google Map."

I'm good at this game. The highest possible score you can get for a five-round game is 25,000 points. My best score is 24,995.

I'm generally good at geography — sure, I remember those Neilson World Maps that used to hang in the classroom —

— but I also work at the game and by now, I have a lot of experience and I've learned a lot. There are no rules written in stone, as far as I can tell, so I use whatever means necessary to figure out where I am.

Yesterday, for example, I was navigating along what seemed to be a secondary highway. It was forested but not too wild. The trees and other vegetation led me to believe it was Northern Hemisphere. It was not North or South America because the painted lines were white, not yellow. The traffic was driving on the right so it was probably Europe. I didn't think it was any of the Scandinavian countries — might have been Poland or one of the Baltic states.

I think I had my answer before I came to the road sign. Sometimes it's just a feeling. When I got close enough, I zoomed in and there it was: I was five kilometres from Богородицк. Russia.

Russia is always a challenge, not least because of the alphabet. It's also a big big country — the biggest, as we Canadians know.

However, I have a few Russian tricks. I took Богородицк to my list of Russian towns and cities. The place names are both in Russian and in English and their oblast is also given. The oblast is like a state or province and is often a clue as to where the city will be found. Богородицк wasn't too difficult. Its English name is Bogoroditsk and it's in the Tula Oblast, south of Moscow. I located it on a Google map and went to GeoGuessr's map and pin-pointed it. Well, not quite. I was about 20 km. off — it's not easy to pinpoint a location on a deserted highway — but it was good for a pretty high score.

In my next round, I found myself in a very different landscape. The narrow roads were of red mud, the agriculture was like something I had never seen before. I travelled up and down several roads — I eventually came to a paved road — and in the whole time I was there, I never saw a car. I saw motor-bikes, usually fitted out with a colourful "roof" and various attachments hooked on to carry things. They were quite cheerful looking.

Eventually, I came to a road sign and it looked like this: เทศบาลเมืองหนองคาย. By now, I know this alphabet by sight so I knew I was in Thailand. I don't have a list of Thai towns and villages so I have to work a little harder. I was lucky this time. I came to a sign that had a few English words on it. It seems that เทศบาลเมืองหนองคาย had been given some kind of award and the congratulations were in English, including the words Nong Khai which I found on the map in northeast Thailand, right near the border of Laos.

Not all the rounds are as challenging as these two. I'll often be plunked down in the middle of a North American town and it's only a matter of time before I begin to see very helpful clues. The first clue I will always see if I'm in the US is a flag.

Two of my least favourite destinations are Brazil and the remote inland highways in Australia. Brazil is another great big country and it has the added disadvantage of having lots of towns, in lots of different states, that all have the same name. Sometimes, I just have to rely on guesswork.

The remote highways in Australia — something like this

are time-consuming because there's nothing to see except regular signs warning you to stay awake or offering an indentation in the road where you can pull over and take a nap. It must be a boring drive in person although at least then you'd know where you are and where you're going. It's boring when you're doing it virtually and you don't have that advantage.

Sometimes though, oftener than not, you find yourself in a place with no signs, no landmarks, no hints at all as to where you might be. But it's so nice there, you're happy just to mosey along and look at the scenery and take pleasure in the occasional flock of sheep.