Interesting Geography facts

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Dry Enclave :-)

Maghval is an enclave of Gujarat inside Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Since Maghval is part of Gujarat which is a dry state ( no alcohol), it's a dry enclave :-)

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Kerala Map - Oddities

Wonder what happened to near Karnataka Border 12.7592634,74.8670133. Border breaks near Talapady bridge

Lots of zig-zags 12.7871038,75.0045312

And more around 12.7402264,74.996034

Seems like followed river for a while around 12.6699567,75.0736464

Again around 12.3072192,75.4442097

11.9763503,76.1116672 Sudden drop

11.6664525,76.4183342 Kerala Karnataka Tamil Nadu Tri-point

11.050254,76.7480588

10.6264282,76.8164766 Wonder why there is such a border through lake

10.391315,76.8350161

9.5867001,77.3259771 Possibly following some hill

8.988661,77.1754944 A Gap

8.4034055,77.1858325 Another Gap

8.361766,77.1587636 Turns

8.3287492,77.177933

I have not gone into map with Mahe.. that is too crazy

Friday, February 4, 2022

Kerla

While walking along Pakistan India border on Google Maps as usual, noticed a Kerla. The Hindi spelling same as that of my home state Kerala

There is a much greener Kerla in Odisha aa well.

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Interesting facts about Timezones

China is the largest country with just a single time zone . China follows a single time zone of UTC+08:00 , even though China spans almost five geographical time zones. In the past China did have 5 time zones, but a single time zone was adopted in 1940s.

This has some interesting consequences like:

The border between Afghanistan and China has the largest time change for any land border. Afghanistan follows UTC+4:30, while China follows UTC+08:00. This leads to a difference of 3.5 hours on crossing the border

References

China TimeZones

India with an east-west length of 2933kms has just one time zone ( IST, UTC+5:30). There has been proposals for having 2-3 time zones. In the past there were multiple timezones

DST seems to have been used during wars.
References

Mongolia Smallest contiguous country with multiple time zones

References

Federated States of Micronesia has an area of just 702 sq kms, but has two times zones UTC+10 and +11. This is because this island country consists of small islands spread over a large area (2700kms long) , Hence even though it is only 702 sq kms in area, it has the 14th largest EEZ
Kiribati has 3 time zones UTC+12, +13 and +14 even though it is just 811 sq kms in area. This is because the islands are spread across a large area

It has the most advanced time zone UTC+14
It is the only country spread over all the 4 hemispheres

Papua New Guinea has two time zones
Democratic Republic of the Congo has two time zones
Kazakhstan has two time zones
Indonesia has 3 time zones
Nepal follows UTC +5:45. The only country which follows quarter hour precision. There are couple of other time zones with quarter hour precision

Greenland has 4 time zones ( from wiki )

UTC−04:00 — Thule Air Base in Greenland
UTC−03:00 — most of Greenland, including inhabited south coast and west coast
UTC−01:00 — Ittoqqortoormiit and surrounding area in Greenland's Tunu county
UTC±00:00 — Danmarkshavn weather station and surrounding area in Greenland's Tunu county, Faroe Islands

Chile has 3 time zones
Mexico has 4 time zones
France has the most number of time zones ( due to its colonial past ) - 12/13
USA 11 time , but this is due to its possessions in Pacific etc
Russia has 11 time zones, out of these 10 are contiguous Kaliningrad_Oblast which is an exclave of Russia
Sri Lanka seems to have changed their time zone many times Sri_Lanka_Standard_Time

References

List_of_time_zones_by_country

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/

https://www.worldtimeserver.com/learn/unusual-time-zones/

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Guayana Esequiba is a disputed territory worth 159,500 sq kms. This is usually not huge number, but considering that Guyana's total area is 214,970 sq kms, around 74% of their country is claimed by Venezuela. Considering that Guyana's territory is also claimed by Suriname, I guess it would be close to the highest percentage of a country's territory being in dispute...

PS .. not considering Taiwan, Kosovo etc.

Indian Mainland place names in Andaman and Nicobar

When I visited Andaman in 2016, I happened to notice a few places named after places in Kerala. Was curious if there are many such places. This is sort of expected as many people have moved from Indian mainland to Andaman and Nicobar ( Mainly to Andaman - This can be seen in the place names as well. Nicobar mostly has place names in the local language)

Given below are the ones in each district

Nankowri

Bengali

Diglipur

Kalighat

Keralapuram

Srinagar

Mayabunder

Jaipur

Lucknow

Pudumadurai

Rangat