MionaI postponed my efforts to get the gold medal for India for quite a while, thinking it would be very hard. Turns out it's quite doable (when patient), and got it on my third try~ 🥇
Maybe I should give Russia a try next
22.050 points on my first try, which is painfully close to the 22.500 I need but also shows it's doable~
Gold on 2nd try!
24.912 points! 😊
My approach: get out of the city/village. FInd a main road or highway, because that's where the signs are. You can quickly narrow it down to the right area. Finding the actual city name on the map will still be a matter of patience though~
I'm currently at 97 of 121 gold medals. I want to get them all this year! No platinum though, that's too hardcore for me~
Today I finished Cyprus (gold) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (platinum), and with it completed Europe again~ 
Thailand gold on the first try with a nice 24.844 score! Since I can't read Thai, road numbers were my best friend (although finding those turned out to be a lengthy adventure)
And today The Philippines with 24.975 points~ It took me a while as well. It's easy to figure out in which city or village you are, but finding it on the map is a different story...
Just finished Paraguay with an easy 24.470 and with that, South America is completely gold again~ 😊
A decent 23.199 on Oman. Quite a difficult country to get a high score in. Lots of roads in the desert without any signage for miles. And the urban rounds aren't much better. Lots of places mentioned are spelled differently on the map, or not mentioned at all.
But, another gold metal in the pocket!
Finally gold on Kazakhstan (24.758)!
Kazakhstan is interesting because it's bilingual, namely Kazakh and Russian. And while they both use the cyrillic script, Kazakh is a Turkic language which has no relation to Russian.
The ability to read cyrillic didn't help me at all because I couldn't make out which words were city names and all the double language stuff made it even harder to figure out.
But not impossible! 💪
Jordan is now gold as well (24.553). I got a good seed with all rounds in larger cities, so there was some occasional English signs to be found~
13 more to go!
Kyrgyzstan is boring, just click click click through uninspiring areas until you finally find a city sign, then look for it on the map. Luckily the country is relatively small.
24.624
6 countries left to get gold on:
- Bangladesh
- Cambodia
- Indonesia
- Lebanon
- Mongolia
- Nepal
These are HARD so tips and tricks are appreciated~
Two new gold medals!
Indonesia 24.693 (Thanks to some great tips from the amazing @ellesaurus )
Mongolia 24.996 (Yes this bugs me)
Elle 💗@miona I really enjoy Indo. It's a combination of vegetation, architecture, island names, directional names, and pole tops.
Dry is pretty exclusive to Sumba and parts of Nusa
Lots of coconut palms is likely Sulawesi
Lots of oil palms is Sumatra or Kalimantan
Mostly tiled roofs is usually Java
Bali has very distinctive almost Gothic architecture
Utara=North
Timur=East
Selatan=South
Barat=West
Tengah=Central
It's not uncommon to see like Kalimantan Timur on a sign or banner
@miona Kabupatens (often abbreviated Kab) are regencies that don't appear on th. map, but often have a city of the same name, particularly in Java, so it can be worth scanning for.
North Sumatra, Nusa, and Central-North Sulawesi all have unique pole tops that are worth learning.
@ellesaurus Thank you, this is very useful! Hardest part is often finding out the correct island and this will certainly help. I'm going to start memorizing this~ ☺️