Mystery Country
Without doing any additional research, I defy anybody to correctly identify this country using only Google Maps.
Ok, now that you’ve butted your head against Google, see if you can get any further using Microsoft or Yahoo.
Still stuck, eh? Answer after the break (and a scroll).
The piece of land you’re looking at is called Nakhchivan which is not itself a country. While located entirely between Armenia, Turkey and Iran, Nakhchivan is actually “a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan.” When scrolling through the list of known enclaves and exclaves, it becomes clear that the Azerbaijan/Armenian region is home to a large portion of the world’s enclaves and exclaves, including Barxudarli, Yuxari Askipara, Karki, Artsvashen, the rayon of Abşeron, Mingachevir, Naftalan, Shaki, Khankendi/Stepanakert, and Yevlakh. Phew.
October 21st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I guessed Georgia. Lee got it on her first guess.
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October 21st, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I was really just surprised by the fact that google would provide absolutely no information about such a large, clearly demarcated area. There’s no indication, aside from its borders, that it’s a country. They don’t label any cities or any roads.
I’ve noticed before that Google seems to be quite inferior to other mapping services as soon as we get out of the US.
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October 22nd, 2007 at 1:30 am
they only just got mexican roads recently.
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October 22nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
the strangemaps blog has a number of fantastic blog posts about particular enclaves and exclaves including photos. check it out.
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October 22nd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
these are east german/west german e[nx]claves, though, so they no longer count. Still, they are cool.
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October 24th, 2007 at 2:05 am
I recently read in The Economist (I believe it were a mid-September edition) a wee bit about the kurds and their struggle to have bit of northern Iraq amid the conflicts, sectarian strife and turks; perhaps they have moved into a new area, what with all that gray area south of even Iran as it reaches above Iraq, to take hold?
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