Lottie Gross
September 26, 2018
Forever getting lost? This game-changing app is mapping the world—every three square meters at a time—meaning you can find your way even in places without street signs.
“Meet at Valero Square” the instructions said. It sounded so simple, but was easier said than done. I stood there, with a noisy construction site to one side and a smattering of busy cafés on the other, cut right down the middle by a sci-fi-looking tram line and traffic-packed road, searching for a stranger called Maria.
I was in Jerusalem, looking for the tour guide who was to show me around the food paradise that is Machane Yehuda Market—a place that would be impossible to navigate without local knowledge and an understanding of the Hebrew alphabet. Stalls, restaurants, bakeries and bars are packed in so tightly, it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins—finding a specific establishment can seem borderline impossible.
This is my perpetual problem as a traveler. My propensity to visit far-flung places, where not only the language is different but the alphabet too, presents one consistent problem: Getting around.
In many destinations—in Dubai, for example—a simple Google Maps search for a hotel, restaurant or attraction name will throw up a pretty accurate result.
But in countries where addressing systems aren’t standardized, or vast remote landscapes without road names or street signs make up a nation’s geography, Google Maps just doesn’t cut it. This is why, in 2018, Lonely Planet adopted a new system of addressing for their Mongolia guidebook: The what3words way.
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Using a randomly-generated three-word address for every three-meter-by-three-meter square, the what3words system works globally, from the favelas in Rio to the mountains of Nepal. The very desk I’m writing this at has its own address (///jumpy.lost.always, if you must know), and Lonely Planet’s offices have theirs (///reader.life.begins), significantly more poetic than my chosen workplace.
