The Hindu : International : Geocaching catching on

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Friday, Jan 28, 2005

International

International

Geocaching catching on

By Sean Thomas

LONDON, JAN. 27. You are standing in a London square, clutching an odd electronic device, looking for a hidden box. You suspect the box is buried near the lime trees to my left, perhaps under the statue of Mahatma Gandhi nearby. The contents of the box could be toys, notebooks, Pot Noodles or edible underwear. Who knows.

Welcome to the world of geocaching, a hobby sweeping the more hi-tech parts of the globe. It involves tracking down useless, fiendishly concealed stashes of stuff with the aid of an electronic navigator. And when you find the cache, you hide it in the same place, perhaps after swapping the baubles inside for gifts of your own.

Two advances

Geocaching started in 2000. It became possible because of two technological advances. The first was the advent of hand-held satellite receivers. The second was the decision by the United States Government, in May 2000, to stop the deliberate degradation to civilians of satellite GPS signals (they had been blurred at the behest of a paranoid Pentagon).

GPS (global positioning system) enables a satellite receiver to locate itself, in latitude and longitude, by computing the time difference between signals from different satellites. As there are dozens of satellites above the earth and it only takes three to triangulate a location, these locations can be determined within a few feet. Similarly, if you have the GPS coordinates of another object — a pub, a pyramid or a pointless box — you can navigate yourself until you are standing practically on top of it.

The day after the U.S. Government's announcement, Dave Ulmer, an American computer engineer, suggested the idea of hiding stashes for others to locate using GPS signals. A few hours later, he concealed the first geocache, up Mount St. Helens in Washington State.

An idea takes hold

Via the Internet, the idea took hold. Thousands of caches have been hidden, from Boston to Buenos Aires. All have been recorded online, sometimes cryptically, for the sole purpose of teasing the GPS-equipped locator.

How do you go about geocaching? First, if you live in an advanced geocaching country such as the U.S. or the U.K., visit www.geocaching.com. This website has a facility whereby you can key in your location, by postcode, and it will tell you the detailed whereabouts of your nearest stash.

For my first geocache, I start close to home. Typing my home postcode in to the website, I see the nearest cache is a 150 m away. However, this stash is a "virtual cache," which presumably means it does not exist.

The next nearest is the Gandhi Peace Cache, a short walk northeast. Turning on my new GPS navigator, I key in the global coordinates. As I set out from my flat, it tells me I am 10 minutes at walking pace from finding the cache.

Around the Mahatma

Using the directional arrows of the navigator, it takes me just a few minutes to reach the bronze statue of the Mahatma. The navigator is informing me that the cache is within a radius of about five feet. But what do I do now? People are already glancing over, as I gaze obsessively at my handheld gizmo. I am not going to risk arrest by overturning a sacred Indian peacemaker.

The same problem greets me at the next three caches. I love the way these GPS navigators tell you where you are, and where to go. I also love the challenge of tracking the GPS coordinates through city streets. But when I get to the neighbourhoods where the caches are secreted, I'm either too embarrassed to start scrabbling or I can't find the damn things.

Finally, a week later, I luck out. It happens down a small side road in Ealing. The cache is only a tiny Tupperware box, hidden under dried leaves, containing a dog-eared copy of the Da Vinci Code and a plastic llama. But that doesn't matter. Leaving a little note in the box, I rush home to record my giddy triumph on geocaching.com. I'm hooked. —

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