The last couple of weeks, I’ve been posted to Hosakote Rural Health Training Center as a part of my community medicine internship. My job here is to visit the 28 Anganawadis in this sub-center and do health checkup on the kids (and pregnant women, if any).

When I first visited Hosakote, even the Rural Health Training Center was not on the map. (On the other hand, Google Maps did not even show where Hosakote was). Ever since Maps.me on my iPhone got the update to add places, I’ve been hungry to find new places. And I started by mapping the RHTC hospital.

There is one nurse at the hospital who is (or was till this week) the go-to source for geographic information about the Anganawadis. We found out the rough location of the 28 Anganawadis from her. She gave us village names and the number of Anganawadis at each place, along with possible itineraries we can take. I could already spot most of the villages on OSM but that was it.

So, the four of us went around, asking people for directions (every few feet, at times) exploring the villages, and finding Anganawadis. We were on two-wheelers one day, on car another day, and so on.

One nice thing about these villages is that they have straight roads in between beautiful farmlands. Also, there’s always a road parallel to the Kabini canal. And these are all interconnected.

My modus operandi here was to find out the Anganawadi by asking locals, and immediately add it to the map, tagged kindergarten, using Maps.me once I reach there. And then smile at the staring kids. Once I have scared them enough, checking each kid’s oral hygiene, lungs, heart, growth, etc., I would ask the Anganawadi worker directions to the next Anganawadi.

Maps.me doesn’t yet include any way to edit roads. Although it does have an option to “record GPS traces” I haven’t explored this yet and do not know what it does. I think this feature can be used to trace roads.

But, I came back to my place and these roads were easily visible from the satellite editor on OSM. So, I just added the roads myself using the OSM web editor.

I added some villages and also fixed the wrong location of a village which was put at the place of a completely different village. Another feature missing for now in maps.me is the ability to add new villages.

Tomorrow is my last day at this place. I’ve only covered Anganawadis and there is a lot left to map (schools, water tanks, temples, …). But I think I’ve already built an incredibly valuable resource, at least to my successors who will be posted to this place because now they don’t have to ask anyone for directions.

OSM, for the win! Kudos to maps.me too!