What a map is

Imagine you are visiting a city for the first time. How would you find the places you want to visit? You could ask someone on the street, but the answer may be 'go straight, then left, then somewhere over there'. Or you could look at a map of the city.

The book sets a little game. You have just got off a train at the railway station and you want to reach the bank. Which way do you go? Is there more than one way? Can you find the public garden, the school and the museum? This is where a map comes in handy. A map is like a treasure guide: it shows you where things are and how to get to them.

So what exactly is a map? A map is a drawing of an area. The area may be small (a village or a town), bigger (your district or state), or very large (India, or even the whole world).

One thing about a map is easy to miss because we are so used to it: on a map you look at the ground as if from the top. A map shows what a bird flying overhead would see, not what you see standing in the street.

A book or collection of maps is called an atlas.

There are several kinds of maps:

• Physical maps mainly show natural features such as mountains, oceans and rivers.
• Political maps show countries or states, their boundaries, cities and so on.
• Thematic maps carry one specific kind of information, for example rainfall, crops, or the main festival of each state.

Every map has three important components: distance, direction and symbols. An easy way to remember them is DDS. We will take each of them in turn.